THE NEXT 100 YEARS OF GNU/LINUX Klaus Knopper The combination of GNU software together with the Linux kernel has shown a path to freedom and access to information technology for everyone, directly or indirectly, from the average worker over the student to medium- and large-sized companies, freeing them from their dependencies of third party proprietary and cost-intensive license contracts. Open Source seems to be not only a philosophy and idea about freedom of science and knowledge exchange, but also a chance for a fast-growing industry based on innovative software development and services that everyone should be able to afford (sometimes even at a zero-cost rate). Still, there are some obstacles to take, ranging from problems that have a technical solution like ease of use, accessibility and coverage of needed features, to nontechnical, human-made problems like the upcoming software patents and existing monopolies, historically grown dependencies and last but not least "politically" inspired reasons, and a lot of money in all the wrong places. In this keynote, risks and chances as well as some personal predictions from the author about the next 100 years in GNU, Linux and Free Software and the IT industry itself will be presented, some of them may very well surprise you
