The last couple of days I have started thinking about what the concept of free knowledge exactly entails. I want to dedicate a few future posts to this subject, in order to explore the idea to its fullest and to give it a proper categorization (at least I will try to). This can be seen as a first outline for a series on free.

A few thoughts come to mind when thinking about freedom if information:

– What does free exactly mean? What distinguishes free knowledge from or relates it to other concepts such as open science or open access, libre or gratis knowledge and ideas like creative commons, open content and copyleft?

– Is there a fundamental difference between freedom of information and freedom of knowledge?

– Is freedom of knowledge possible? And if so, what are the pros and cons of such a development; do we really want our knowledge to be free?

– Where does the idea of ‘information wants to be free’ originate form, and what is its historical context?

– What kind of different economic, political, social and philosophical issues play a role when we talk about free knowledge?

– Can we develop an economy of free, or a business model that revolves around free access? If so, what kind of possibilities or models are there (and which are sustainable?) and what are their pros and cons?