[ Thanks to Fred Mobach
for this report. ]
Hello,
The German magazine c’t has published on
their website a story on the First Open Source Conference ‘Wizards
of OS’ in Berlin, held at July 16 and 17, 1999.
Some citations :
Open Source has become the magic word in computer science. A
two-day meeting in Berlin was the opening event to the ‘Wizards of
OS’ conference series discussing the role of Open Source software
between markets and social development.
Volker Grassmuck of Mikro e.V. explains the conference’s
background: Open Source is not only about software industry making
source codes available, it’s also about Internet-related higher
development speeds which leave the term ‘intellectual property’
meaning exclusive use in general open for discussion. Approaches
like the Gutenberg project [2] go far beyond software in their
attack on copyrights, copyright legislation and the general thought
of ‘this is mine’ or ‘this is property of XY,inc.’
The important thing about Open Source or free software is
neither that you get the programs with their source codes nor that
they are free (of charge). What’s most important is that you are
allowed to modify the source code without restrictions to customize
a program to your own needs or get rid of problems and that you can
then pass the modified program on under the same conditions which
applied to the original version.
I hope you like the story.
Regards,
Fred Mobach
fred@mobach.nl