EUROPE: Why not more free information?

A great deal of free information is available through the internet and a vast amount is of incalculable benefit. But why shouldn't there be even more? Wouldn't the spread of free software and universal access to scientific and cultural knowledge be a huge gain for everybody? The Dutch certainly think so.

Last September, the Netherlands launched the Science Education and Learning in Freedom, or SELF project, to research and classify free software and open standards. Now SELF coordinator Wouter Tebbens has been named president of the new Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), a spin-off from the Internet Society in the Netherlands which has much the same objectives as SELF.

Speaking to University World News, Tebbens said there was a need to establish new ways of creating a pool of free knowledge and software. He acknowledged that this was already growing enormously through such projects as Wikipedia, Linux and the internet itself.

So while there was no need to re-invent the wheel, "there's a lot of work to be done on the quality of collaboratively created material". Much of this was of high quality but it could be difficult to find, Tebbens said. Wikipedia, for instance, was a very successful collaborative project although often the quality needed more work.

FKI is based on the concept of 'copyleft', a form of licensing which removes copyright restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions mostly in the area of computer software, documents, music and art.

On the other hand, SELF is concerned with research on available materials and detection of potential gaps. It has identified "dark spots" where the coverage of materials published under free licences is poor or clearly insufficient. Such areas will be considered for further research into available materials and eventually for the production of new materials inside the SELF project.