I was too quick to conclude the devroom was declined. It was merged into the Decentralized devroom. Yeah 
For the record, here is a copy of the e-mail we received today:
Please work together on a call for papers over the next week or so.
--> cortex@worlddomination.be, jrabier@ilico.org, heartsucker@riseup.net, loic@dachary.org
"Modern technology has given the powerful new abilities to eavesdrop and collect data on innocent people. Surveillance Self-Defense (as defined by EFF) relies on a range of Free Software tools to counteract this negative impact of massive surveillance. It is now a fundamental assumption about modern life that we are all connected. Almost everyone carries one or more electronic devices with us at all times. We will cover a range of topics around how to use FLOSS tools to help minimize the amount of information an individual leak while using their electronic devices. SSD doesn't end with Tor Browser and Signal. For many people, activists and those living under tyrranical governments, SSD is a full time job. This devroom will additionally cover tactics one could apply to their day to day life.
Possible topics:
* Anonymous overlay networks: https://www.torproject.org/ https://freenetproject.org/
* Whistleblower platforms: https://securedrop.org/ https://www.globaleaks.org/
* Privacy oriented Operating Systems: https://tails.boum.org/ https://heads.dyne.org/ https://www.qubes-os.org/
* Collaborative localization https://www.localizationlab.org/
* Infrastructure supporting anonymous browsing https://nos-oignons.net/
* Security Self-Defense training and awareness raising https://nothing2hide.org/ https://ssd.eff.org/
* Operational security: how to minimize the amount of information someone can collect about you online and on the streets https://freedom.press
* Basic threat modeling: what sort of paranoia do you realisticially need to have? What can you do once you've defined your threat model?
* Steps to minimize damange in the event of a breach (hack, have items confiscated by border agents, arrest)
The following projects have interest in submitting proposals for presentations in our devroom, should we be accepted:
* https://qubes-os.org
* https://heads.dyne.org/
* https://securedrop.org/
* https://nothing2hide.org/
* https://freedom.press/
* https://www.globaleaks.org/
"* Free Software contributors are given an opportunity to understand and participate to globally useful projects
* The challenges can be explained to a very technical audience able to provide suggestions and ideas
* Successful Surveillance Self-Defense needs to be provided by Free Software
* Projects share a common goal and would get an opportunity to meet"
"Open Source and Free Software promises were to empower individuals when it came to computing. Three decades later, computing is almost always connected to the Internet one way or another. PCs are less used while smartphones are soaring and data is collected and stored on servers on which we have very limited control as users. What happened to our freedom and empowerment in the meantime? The outlook is not so great: we have less and less control over computing. Network Neutrality is in danger and most code we use is proprietary and runs on servers we don't have control over. There are a few projects around the world trying to change that. It's time to connect them together and give them a bit of visibility and FOSDEM is a great place for that.
Topics could include all layers of the stack, from network, hardware, OS, platform, apps and services. This could give us the following topics:
- Community-driven networks, such as the FFDN (Federation of non-profit Internet access providers), Guifi.net, Freifunk, ...
- Self-hosting solutions, such as Cozy Cloud, YunoHost, the Internet Cube project, Freedombox, Sandstorm, Cloudron, Nextcloud, ...
- Ethical hosting providers / alternatives to GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) such as Framasoft, Indiehosters, the CHATONS project, ...
- Decentralized / federated networks protocols and platforms such as ActivityPub, Mediagoblin, Mastodon, GNUsocial, Diaspora, Hubzilla, ...
- Decentralized / distributed instant messaging, file sharing and content storage such as Matrix, Movim, Ring, IPFS, Retroshare, ..."
"All of us use 3 types of computers: PCs, smartphones and Cloud systems. This third category deserves to be free too. Servers running free hardware and operating systems that we can keep control of ; platforms we can develop free software on ; and a neutral network we can use to communicate with services and with each other. The need for internet decentralization has been a hot topic for several years, and is now in the high priorities topic according to the FSF (c.f. https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/decentralization-federation ).
For several years, people tried to build a devroom proposal around self-hosting. Here, we want to broaden the scope of the proposal, bringing together complementary projects to FOSDEM. The success of last year's Devroom made it pretty clear that there is huge demand from the FOSDEM attendees to discuss the decentralized Internet topic:
- All talks were full in attendance from the first talk on Sunday morning (not an easy feat considering the aftermath of Saturday's beer tasting usually taking place in Brussels) until the end of the afternoon
- There were people waiting all day long to get inside (see photos and Twitter discussions back then).
- We received a huge number of propositions, far more than we could accept even with talk length reduced to 30min.
A few quotes and pictures, among many others :
- The Matrix team : ?? [...] huge queues for the Decentralised Internet room [...]. Hopefully next year FOSDEM will allocate a larger room for decentralisation! ?? - https://matrix.org/blog/2017/02/06/fosdem-2017-report/ , https://twitter.com/ilumium/status/828172686362890240/photo/1 ;
- ?? The queue for the Decentralized Internet Devroom at @fosdem is INSANE (probably several hours of waiting to get in) ?? - https://twitter.com/nitot/status/828216585626206209 ;
- ?? I am losing all hope to get in the decentralized internet room, for the third consecutive talk :( That's very good sign tho! ?? - https://twitter.com/koolfy/status/828201908514988032 ;
- ?? Have to speak soon but decentralized internet room is full and can't get in :-D People are interested in a decentralized internet! #FOSDEM ?? - https://twitter.com/nemesisdesign/status/828177060128555008 ;
- ?? Queue for decentralised internet section at #FOSDEM - sign of the times ?? - https://twitter.com/stskeeps/status/828173562963951620 ;
- ?? Crazy! The Decentralized Internet Devroom is packed and the queue outside is HUGE! ?? https://twitter.com/nitot/status/828176160848740353 ;
- ?? Woah, not much of a chance to get into the #decentralised #internet room. Queue coming down the stairs. Bigger room next time for this popular topic, #FOSDEM? ?? https://iliketoast.net/p/1481650 ."
