osem review 2026: the free, open-source event manager built for FOSS conferences. Compare features, self-hosting setup and alternatives like Pretalx.
osem, or Open Source Event Manager, is a free, open-source event management tool maintained by the openSUSE community and built on Ruby on Rails. It was created specifically to handle the workflow of running Free and Open Source Software conferences, rather than general commercial events.
The tool has been used to run multiple editions of the openSUSE Conference and the ownCloud Conference, handling events with over 1,000 attendees and 500 paper submissions, and remains actively developed as a community open-source project on GitHub under the MIT license.
osem supports the full conference lifecycle: opening a call for papers, collecting and reviewing speaker submissions, building and publishing an event schedule, and managing registration. Organizers can create a public event website and splash page directly from the platform.
Because it targets volunteer-run technical conferences specifically, osem includes program-review and classification workflows for evaluating paper submissions that many general-purpose event platforms lack, along with speaker and volunteer coordination tools.
osem is completely free and open source with no paid tiers, since it is maintained by the openSUSE community rather than a commercial company.
Organizers self-host osem on their own infrastructure, typically using Docker, and there is no official managed hosting or paid support offering; the only cost is the organizer's own server hosting.
Yes, osem is entirely free and open source under the MIT license, maintained by the openSUSE community with no paid tiers or licensing fees.
osem is maintained by the openSUSE community as an open-source project on GitHub, rather than by a commercial company.
osem is used to run Free and Open Source Software conferences, covering call-for-papers submission, review, scheduling, event websites, and attendee registration.
Yes, osem is a self-hosted platform. Organizers deploy it on their own servers, commonly using Docker, since there is no official managed cloud version.
osem is built primarily with Ruby on Rails, with additional use of Haml for templating and Docker for deployment.
osem has powered multiple editions of the openSUSE Conference and the ownCloud Conference, among other Free and Open Source Software community events.
Alternatives include Pretalx, Indico, Sessionize, and general-purpose commercial event platforms like Eventbrite, though those lack osem's conference-specific call-for-papers review workflow.