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There is creativity even without total control.
(Lawrence Lessig)
Free Software was an eye-opener. It proved that freedom, openness and community work. Which is even more surprising since this was established in the very area of technology that forms the core of the digital "knowledge society" and, as such, is the battlefield for fierce competition. With our eyes now open, it has become clear that open contributory knowledge cultures and community-based innovation can be found most anywhere – in law and genetics, in journalism and in the arts. WOS 2 invites representatives of these cultures to Berlin to talk about cooperation and tools, the legal position of informational common goods, different software cultures, security, an open and open source e-government and governance, and a possible future beyond capitalism.
While the first WOS conference in July 1999 focussed on surveying free software and its practical applications, the WOS 2 will center around the changes in the conditions of intellectual creation of any kind, the mediation of its results and their collaborative continued development. In the "knowledge society", questions of the production, distribution, archiving and reception of software-based knowledge enter center stage. It is precisely this set of topics the WOS 2 want to address.
"To defend the freedom of knowledge is probably the most important task facing us in the future," said Prof. Dr. Norbert Szyperski, a leading micro-economist, at the Wizards of OS 1. The WOS 2 want to take up this challenge and give impulses for an open culture of free knowledge.
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