Happy Birthday, Oekonux
Today, the Oekonux project celebrates its 10-th birthday. Stefan Merten, the main founder and maintainer of the project, wrote on the mailing list:
Ten years ago, at the 21st of July 1999, I sent the first mail using the first Oekonux mailing list which had been just created:
I remember that at this time after ten years of heavy political activism I did not want to engage in something new. I remember that I was tired of this and also bored because after ten years you start to see the repetitions… Well, in the end I did not do what I wanted but instead followed my inner calling and founded Oekonux. That was really Selbstentfaltung 🙂 .
Today I’m proud that after ten years my initial idea – though extended in many ways – is still interesting to so many people. In fact I think in my public life Oekonux is certainly the most important thing I ever did. In any case Oekonux changed my life and I also found a couple of friends in this project.
During the last ten years Oekonux saw good times and bad times. More than 18000 e-mails went over the main discussion mailing lists and we managed to organize four international conferences. This all started with 14 persons. Most of them had attended the spontaneous session I organized after the “Neue Ökonomien durch Open Source?” (“New economies by Open Source?”) at the first “Wizard of OS” conference some weeks before.
I’m proud and happy that at the moment there is so much engagement in the project. To me this indicates that even after ten years Oekonux is not obsolete but still necessary and useful.
Of course this all would have not been possible without the engagement of all of you. I learnt sooo much during all these years and hope that my contributions helped others to learn, too. Thanks to all of you for these ten years.
I’m looking forward to many more fruitful years of Oekonux. I’m looking forward to many more insights about these utmost interesting times we are all witnessing. I’m looking forward to continue to work with you.
Happy Birthday, Oekonux! 🙂