Thilo Pfennig   Premium-Mitglied   Gruppenmoderator

I have been working woth computers since ca. 1988 with a Amiga 2000 being my first machine. One of my favourite topics from the beginning was Hypertext which I worked on with AmigaGuide and after 1995 I used a Mac and HyperCard and then switched to HTML as soon as that got available.
 
I switched to Linux 1997 and also tapped into the world of free licences and havent stopped since. I have been using Creative Commons from the very first start as I found out about it. I have helped organizing some local events about Linux and Open Source in order to get the local community started, because I think actually Open Source is also very much about a vibrant community where people help each other.
 
I have also been active in some Open Source projects like at GNOME marketing or Foresight Linux. Since some times I have switched my focus to the OpenBSD world, because I like how they do not try to hit on people to convince them to use their operating system. I really do not think that marketing as we know it really works in the long run. Marketing very much makes everything quite the same and reduces people to consumers. And the new community based or viral marketing is not much better. The truth is that good stuff takes a while and also learning and finding out about things takes its time. But thats not what the industry will tell you.
 
My experience with people in the IT business is that most do not really test Linux and software but find out about something and then stick to it forever. I tend to really test software and try to use it the way that it was supposed to be used. So when you use and update OpenBSD like it is suggested for example you download the file sets into a directory, reboot it and then update the whole system in one go. People who do not learn about how things work will tell you you might need to compile all the stuff yourself - but thats more something for developers. For most people the simpler technique will be sufficient.
 
Where are we going? I talk about "Web 3.0" as something where we start freeing content and have website that rather than compete to each other integrate with each other. There is also a social aspect where users need to organize to demand new freedoms (so they own the data they enter or make them licensed for free with). The essence is to really protect the freedom of the content and the freedom of the people using the new technologies - so they really "own" them. And then people need to be able to organize freely and not being trapped into some kind of network or technology. That will be a hard fight but its necessary just like we are used to travel roads without being intercepted all the time.
 
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Another thing I like to do is to open a small local cinema in my hometown. I am not there yet, but thats one of my dreams.