Abstract

This paper shall give a brief history of Free Software and Open Source, then shall describe the background philosophy of these social movements and the social aspects of the non-proprietary software community in more detail, and address possible problems which could arise, for instance, for public funding of non-proprietary software development or for concepts of responsibility in the ethics of technology. Finally, a possible future of non-proprietary software shall be outlined, which strongly differs from the bright forecasts of the mainstream Open Source and Free Software supporters.