Open Source International Conference, Malaga Friday 20th February 2004 - In his keynote speech on Wednesday morning, leading American technology philosopher, Professor Carl Mitchum made a plea for "convivial" software - available to all and ethical at heart, and while much of this conference has focussed on the economics of OSS, the underlying philosophy underpinning it echoes this view.

An impassioned plenary session late that afternoon saw ex-President of Spain Felipe Gonzalez and MEP Marco Cappato of Italy allude to the need for new political syntheses to encompass the potential changes brought about through the widespread adoption of OSS and ICT/internet usage generally. Gonzales asserted that access to ICT alone is not enough - [it is] "the ability to create and to add value that is important..." stating in effect that a critical awareness of and engaging content is needed for the technology to truly benefit society; in short, collaboration and participation rather than passive consumption.

Elsewhere, contributors have emphasised that users should demand interoperability - that it should be a basic right "...[like] clean air & water..." and that they should evangelise OSS through actively passing on software amongst their communities. OSS has "crossed a Rubicon", it was said - it was not if but when OSS would be universally adopted and with distributed networks allow true collaboration across cultures and geographies through the virtual collapsing of the distances that seperate us.

Many more smaller forums have discussed specific aspects of OSS and its impact in changing the relations between us - the full texts of most are available in the proceedings from the conference, which will be posted for download soon...

One news item of note to have emerged is the meetings of the Debian Derivatives group, held in parallel with the conference here - which aims to unify all the current derivatives of Debian Linux under the Debian banner and to formulate ideas and strategies for the future development of Debian Linux and OSS generally.