Interview with André and Benjamin from the FFII at the 24c3

Jan and me had the chance to talk to André and Benjamin Henrion from the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) at the 24c3 Chaos Communication Congress. Besides some general talk about the activities of the FFII in Brussels we get a few insights into the current campaign against the Microsoft standard ooxml. Direct …

Serchilo: Meta Search Engine with Wiki Commands

I followed a lightning talk of Georg Jähnig on serchilo.net at the 24c3 Chaos Communication Congress. The video is available now in the torrent network. I uploaded it to Google Video (please post alternatives as comments). Last year I already published an interview with Georg in German. He put quite a lot of work in …

All layers must be free in a a free civilization

Countless working examples of people creating free layers show the huge potential of free and open systems. However interior and exterior difficulties and problems in communities that are engaged in projects like in the free software world cannot always be overcome. Successful as well as failed ideas and projects can teach invaluable lessons. To learn …

What are free layers?

Some questions should be answered that could help to understand what free layers actually are. 1. What is the common idea behind free culture, free content, free software, free hardware, free infrastructures and a free economy? 2. What are working examples of free layered projects and why do they work and others did not? 3. …

Free Society = Read-Write Society: A Culture of Openness and Free Collaboration

What made and makes the development of free software, free content and free infrastructures – alternatives to centralized systems of knowledge distribution and development possible? What made and makes the system of the many in contrast to the system of the few and powerful possible? The Internet is an important factor, but indeed it is …

Mahalo – New Entry in the Search Eengine Market. An Alternative?

Jason McCabe Calacanis is the founder of Mahalo.com. With Mahalo he tries to establish a new search engine based on user submitted search result pages. In order to motivate people to write search result pages Mahalo pays part time guides 10 to 15 USD. Part time guides who submit a search page result that is …

Open Business – Spreadshirt and Jamendo

Some time ago Andreas Milles of Spreadshirt had a presentation at the Berlin Webmonday about his companies Open Logo Contest. They had developed a community that worked on the development of their new logo. In the end they actually took the logo design of a free designer, who they only knew through his contributions on …

Freedom of Exchange of Data and Information in Open Wireless Networks

It is often stated that the Internet is the basis of the free communication and exchange of software and content – all kinds of information and knowledge. Yes, the Internet especially in the 1990’s could be regarded as a free infrastructure that enabled free exchange. This is changing rapidly throughout the world, as we see …

A world where everything is free

Imagine a world, where everything is free. Impossible? Right now people all over the world are working on this idea. They want to create a world where you can instantly have access to free content like free music, videos or texts, free software like free operating systems, programs, computer games and even powerful search engines, …

Pakanto, der Paketmacher für Linuxdistributionen: Paketbeschreibungen mit Wikihilfe kollaborativ erstellen

Um Software bei Linux zu installieren, stellen Distributoren, wie zum Beispiel Debian oder Ubuntu, einen Katalog mit verschiedenen Softwarepaketen zur Verfügung. Dieser Katalog existiert häufig nur in englischer Sprache oder ist oft nur rudimentär übersetzt. Bei diesem Problem setzt das Projekt Pakanto, der Paketmacher, von Daniel Arnold an. Mit Hilfe eines Wikis als kollaboratives Werkzeug …