Abstract
This speech will concentrate on an often neglected aspect that the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community introduced to society: A new organizational form of knowledge work in a network of excellence. Due to the fact that FOSS developers and projects act in distributed and heterogenous knowledge networks and furthermore collaborate in self-organised groups, they serve as the prototype elements of the emerging Knowledge Society. In this respect, the FOSS community does not only provide a public domain software infrastructure for eGovernment, it also provides a management approach for how eGovernments can act in a society highly dependent on expertise. In fact, eGovernment is not only about the right software choice, it's also about understanding and learning from the FOSS community. This way, society can profit from basic ideas and good practice of FOSS projects; whereby the broad acceptance and understanding of FOSS can be improved. Likewise, local, regional, national and supranational eGovernments may utilize the Internet to involve affected and interested groups to gain a higher legitimation of their decisions. In reference to Eric S. Raymond, the slogan of eGoverment can be put "Communicate often, communicate early!". |
