Since 2000 we run a nonprofit and planetary effort as a network of hackers dedicated to development of software libre. We support broad access to technology and freedom of creativity by developing socially responsible media architecture.

We act as an international network of experts syndicating and contributing to diverse technological developments for their quality and role within societies. We share peer reviews, mutual support and resources for peace and equal rights, operating outside the logic of capitalism to fight mental slavery. We support cooperation within social contexts to leverage on-line and on-site community values, especially zones of crisis and marginalized cultural sectors, to empower people with the hacker attitude to re/think, re/mix and re/design to circumvent limitations and find a way out from economies based on scarcity and privilege.

Origins

The Freaknet is an on-line and on-site medialab and museum based in the Mediterranean island of Sicily, surviving since 1994 the hostile environment of South Italian criminal administration and cultural repression.

The Hackmeeting is since 1998 the annual gathering of computer and reality hackers, an auto-organized TAZ inspired by people and projects at CCC, 2600, GNU and EFF.

Servus.at supported the birth of this digital community since the very beginning, hosting it in the digital space, offering solidarity and support for our on-line operations.

Our digital community is born from these on-site communities and even more on-line, in the past 8 years it gathered a wider international participation that interacts on software development and network cultures.

Goals

To promote the idea and practice of open source knowledge sharing within civil society: by fostering research, development, production and distribution of free software solutions when employing public resources.

To open the participation to on-line and on-site communities, leveraging the democratic and horizontal access to technology, lowering the economical requisites to its accessibility, redistributing power to grass-root communities.

To foster employment of free software in education and creativity: exploring new forms of expression and
interaction, disseminating new languages that can be freely adopted and re-elaborated by everyone, insuring the long term conservation of digital artworks.

To support free software development, also when non-profitable: being software a socially relevant media it
should not be invented and maintained only on the basis of its merchantability.