The Open Source World in 2020
Stefan Merten, founder of Oekonux project, is going to give a presentation at FrOSCon — the Free and Open Source Conference in Sankt Augustin, Germany, 23th – 24th of august. The presentation titled »The (Open Source) World in 2020 — A History Based Look into the Future« is already online. Stefan’s style is to cut down complex analysis to handy statements, where he draws his conclusions from.
Here are the conclusions giving a good overview of the talk:
- 1984 — Very beginnings may be hard to notice
- 1996 — Good ideas grow because they are useful to people
- 2008 — Basic principles are strong enough to spread out
- First basic principle: Selbstentfaltung — Something what individual and society wants
- Second basic principle: Openness — Technology may make way for new societal phenomenons
- A new mode of production emerges — Something wrong with classic economy 😉
- Power from new principles — Oekonux thesis: New mode of production => new society
- Five-step model of development — There is hope!
- Capitalism as a successful germ form: 200 years back — A new mode of production as a germ form can take over
- A peek into the future — Vertical expansion is quite sure — Horizontal expansion depends on many aspects
- Deeper embedding — More won’t happen in 12 years
Please read the details (aka bullet points).
Conclusion of the conclusions of the bullet point list: Qualitatively, in 2020 we have the same situation as in 2008.
„The future will be just like the past, only more so.“ This kind of prediction is utterly boring, and it’s usually wrong.
@Christian: »…it’s usually wrong« — Why?
@StefanMz: The general problem with extrapolating the future from the past is that it doesn’t take into account that current trends will, at some time, slacken or change their direction; and that new trends, currently non-existent or very tiny, will take over.
In 1996, there was no Wikipedia, no file sharing networks, no Creative Commons-based free culture movement, no YouTube. All these phenomena aren’t just „expansion of the principles of free software“, they all have their own principles and foundations, which, while related, aren’t the same. None of them was really expected or predictable in 1996, not in the way they turned out.
Of course, Stefan Merten may be right in predicting that the next 12 years will be far more boring than the last 12 years have been, but somehow I doubt it…