Free Culture
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| Libervis Mar 02, 2006 9:59 AM EDT |
FOSS movements logically lay a foundation for a new world caused by the explosion of digital technology and internet because it is software that plays a major role at making this technology and this network work. So that's probably why all these other movements for free knowledge and free content (led by organizations such as wikimedia foundation and creative commons) sprung up later and largely built upon the ideas of Free Software. I tend to call all of this, the whole new world that these movements (which appear rather separate) fight for, a free culture or maybe more broadly a free society, a free world. The only problem, as already implied, is that it still seems as we haven't yet interconnected well enough. For example, creative commons is sympathetic to Free Software, but still doesn't go far enough at promoting Free Software and free file formats for use for creating content that they strive to make more accessible and free. They're fighting for a Free Culture, but not fully embracing Free Software as its crucial part. Same may be true for other movements such as open access here. Do we know about them well enough, even if they know about us? How well do we corelate with each other in striving to bring this new world? Maybe we should work towards uniting on common grounds that we have. There is one organization for which I think is the best example of an organization that connected the dots properly and is pushing for a true Free Culture. It is Wikimedia Foundation. They are promoting free content like creative commons does, but are at the same time promoting use of fully free file formats and Free Software at presenting and producing this content. Just look at Wikimedia Commons and you'll know what I mean: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page There's also a great read by Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia): http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/archives/2004/10/21/fre... To sum up, my point is that all those free culture/society movements should get closer together recognizing their same goals and working together on achieving them because free knowledge needs Free Software and Free Software needs Free Knowledge as much as Free Content needs Free Software and Free Knowledge. And so we need each other. :) There's a related article that we recently wrote about this called "Free Culture needs Free Software: [url=http://www.libervis.com/smartsection item.itemid 97.htm]http://www.libervis.com/smartsection item.itemid 97.htm[/url] Btw, for an inspirational read look at the Libre Culture Manifesto: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Libre_Society_Manifesto Thank you Daniel |
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