Wizards of OS 2
-- Open Cultures & Free Knowledge --

at the
House of World Cultures Berlin
October 11-13, 2001

Press Release 1, May 25, 2001

Subject: press release: Wizards Of OS 2
Date sent: Fri, 25 May 2001 23:15:15 +0200
From: Wizard of OS <presse@wizards-of-os.org>

Wizards of OS 2
Open Cultures & Free Knowledge

International Conference at the
House of World Cultures Berlin
11-13 October, 2001

http://wizards-of-os.org/

The three day conference "Wizards of Operating Systems 2" addresses a broad audience interested in digital media culture and the future of the knowledge society. It will bring together about 50 German and international speakers and up to 1000 participants for presentations, discussions, tutorials, artistic contributions and informal discourse.

organized by

mikro e.V., Berlin
http://mikro-berlin.org/

the Federal Office for Political Education, Bonn
http://www.bpb.de/

and the Working Group on Informatics & Society at Humboldt University Berlin
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/

in cooperation with

Chaos Computer Club Berlin, C-Base Berlin, Debian Project, Berliner Linux User Group, German Unix User Group, V2_Lab for the Unstable Media Rotterdam, De Waag -- Society for Old and New Media Amsterdam, Telepolis, Linux-Magazin, De:Bug and others

### CONCEPT ###

"To defend the freedom of knowledge is probably the most important task facing us in the future," said Prof. Norbert Szyperski, a leading micro-economist, at the Wizards of OS 1.

In the "knowledge society", questions related to the production, distribution, archiving and usage of software-based knowledge become pivotal. Among computer operating systems -- as GNU/Linux and others have proven -- free, open solutions are a real alternative to proprietary, closed products. But what about the other building blocks of the "knowledge society"?

Radio frequencies, standards and protocols, search engines and archives, school and universities, libraries and museums, public broadcasting and the knowledge of public administration -- don't these things have the character of an infrastructure, of "operating systems of the knowledge society", as well? How free or unfree are each of these? We need an environmentalism of the digital knowledge environment (James Boyle) with a political economy of "intellectual property" at its core. How much "knowledge as commodity" can we afford? How much public knowledge do we need?

The second WOS conference intends to explore routes to an open culture of free knowledge. It will focus on the changes in the conditions of intellectual creation of all kinds, the mediation of its results and their collaborative continued development. How accessible, transparent, participatory and extensible are any of the various infrastructural layers? "Intellectual property" has a powerful lobby, but who will stand up for the rights of common knowledge?

### MAIN TOPICS ###

*** Free Software ***
What is the current state of the concept of free software following its adoption by big corporations and public administrations and after the roller coaster ride on the tech-heavy markets such as the Nasdaq and the Neuer Markt? Representatives from HP, IBM and others offer their views on what to many remains an unanswered question: How can you make money with free software?

*** Among Equals ***
Napster and SETI@Home have brought peer-to-peer networking to the fore. P2P currently supports communities of scientists, technicians and journalists in the generation, collection and filtering of knowledge. Can we speak yet of a general shift from competition to cooperation?

*** Biotechnology ***
The human genome is being explored by the international community of scientists racing against biotech corporations -- some to further public knowledge, others to protect exploitable private knowledge. Biomaterial and knowledge from patients and ethnic groups is being expropriated and patented. Are open source genetics and fair trade agreements an alternative?

*** The Legal Ordering of Knowledge ***
Global information flows challenge nation-state-based regulation of copyright, patents and trademark law and tend ever more towards harmonization. The technical implementation of property claims hard-codes them into the operating system and at the same time creates new opportunities for zoning. What about the right of public access -- a necessary prerequisite for innovation -- that is supposed to be equally protected by many national laws?

*** Not For Sale: Public Knowledge ***
Libraries, museums, schools, universities and public broadcasting store and nurture the wealth of common knowledge. Today, public knowledge resources often appear as luxury goods that in a time of tightened budgets might just as well be economized -- or even more: delegated for profit-oriented cultivation by the private sector. But how does this compare with what the German Constitutional Court called the public mandate for a basic provision of information?

*** Knowledge Transfer Among Rich and Poor ***
Has the promise of free software furthered the self-determination of the South, or countered the growth of the Digital Divide?

### SPEAKERS ###

The complete list of currently confirmed speakers is at http://wizards-of-os.org
Here, a few highlights:

Bruce Perens
OpenSourceManager at Hewlett Packard, Berkeley CA

Arthur L. Holden
Chairman and CEO First Genetic Trust, Inc., Deerfield, IL

Thomas Krueger
President of the Federal Office for Political Education, Bonn

Rusty Foster
developer of the p2p system Kuro5hin.org, San Francisco

Hansjuergen Garstka
Privacy and Information Access Commissioner of the State of Berlin, Germany

Cori Hayden
expert on bioprospecting, biodiversity and pharmaceutical commercialization agreements, Cambridge, UK

Lawrence Lessig
Cyberlaw Expert, Stanford University

Frank Rieger
Chaos Computer Club and gate5 AG, spezialist for geographical information systems, Berlin

Thomas Macho
Professor of Cultural Studies at Humboldt University Berlin

Tim Hubbard
Head of Human Sequence Analysis at the Sanger Centre and Joint Head of the open source genome annotation project Ensembl, a joint project between the Sanger Centre and the European Bionformatics Institute, Cambridge UK

Brigitte Zypries
Under-Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, in charge of the eGovernment projects of the Federal Government, Berlin

Brian McConnell
SETI@Home, San Francisco

 

### THE WIZARDS OF OS 1 ###

The first WOS conference in July 1999 focused primarily on free software and the open, highly distributed, collaborative process in which it is created.

More than 600 members of the science, technology, business and art communities came together in the House of World Cultures in Berlin to talk about the foundations of the computer-based culture. Since then, a series of workshops and seminars have addressed computer science, legal, political, artistic and philosophical facets of the field of topics.

### WOS 1 IN THE PRESS ###

"All in all, one can certainly call the first 'Wizards of OS' conference, the first in a series of related events, a milestone in the history of the open source movement." (c't)

"This could be the most important event in years" (Wau Holland, CCC pioneer in Wired News)

"An important conference because it was not a typical software special interest conference but dealt much more generally with the social, political and economic meaning of software, licensing, intellectual property rights and copyright." (Junge Welt)

"At a recent Berlin conference 'The Wizard of OS -- Open Sources and Free Software', the techno-intellectuals from the open source movement made it clear that they are not only interested in technology, but also and especially in politics." (Sueddeutsche Zeitung)

### CONTACTS ###

If you would like to know more, you can find up-to-date information at
http://wizards-of-os.org/.

You can receive monthly updates by signing up to the mailinglist wos-announce@mikrolisten.de. Send a mail to majordom@eg-r.isp-eg.de with "subscribe wos-announce" in the body.

Please address general questions to presse@wizards-of-os.org and questions on topics and organization to wos-crew@mikrolisten.de.

If you no longer wish to receive any further information about Wizards of OS 2, please send a brief message to presse@wizards-of-os.org. Your address will then be removed from the list. Otherwise, you will receive three more press releases via this distribution list until October.

Wizards of OS

Thomas Thaler, WOS Press