Le Monde: after the free software, free networks ?

After free software, free broadband networks ? This is what could initiate the experience launched in Seattle by a student and volunteer community, an adventure told by Le Monde in an article "A Seattle se construit l'après-Net". What is the idea they are implementing since September 2000 ? Creating a whole ideal local network : it would be free and opened to every inhabitant who owns a computer; it would be managed on basis of voluntary, mutual aid and share; it would broadband, in order to transfer texts, sounds and pictures of perfect quality : above all, it would be wireless, non material and omnipresent…

This is what they have planned to do by setting nodes in strategic places of the city, with the help of inhabitants of buildings and individual houses. The Seattle Wireless has begun to function. Matt and Steve, the two founder-students of the movement says that ”the previous generation created the movement of free software, which becomes essential after years of underground status. Now, we are launching the movement of free software”. The future Linus Torvald of the network ? In 1991, we have to remind it, Linux was launched in the same discretion…