Dries Buytaert

Free as in "free speech", not as in "free beer".

Years we spent fighting to be able to read, fix, adapt and improve software. Being able to operate software wasn't always enough so we routed around the problem of software lock in. That solution is called Free and Open Source Software.

With web services becoming a commodity, and with companies like Yahoo! and Google that collect all our data, how do we prevent that our own data becomes proprietary data that we have no control over? How are we going to route around data lock in?

Much like Linux was able to take on Microsoft, and Wikipedia was able to take on Brittanica, will there be a community-driven David to take on today's Goliaths? Or do we need a Free Data Foundation similar to the Free Software Foundation?

A new battle is brewing.