GPL Society
The concept of a future society which would follow the principles inherent in the General Public License has been developed by the German-led group Oekonux:
Stephan Merten, of Oekonux.de, defines the 'General Public License Society':
In every society based on exchange - which includes the former Soviet bloc - making money is the dominant aim. Because a GPL Society would not be based on exchange, there would be no need for money anymore. Instead of the abstract goal of maximizing profit, the human oriented goal of fulfilling the needs of individuals as well as of mankind as a whole would be the focus of all activities. The increased communication possibilities of the Internet will become even more important than today. An ever-increasing part of production and development will take place on the Internet or will be based on it. The B2B (business to business) concept, which is about improving the information flow between businesses producing commodities, shows us that the integration of production in the field of information has just started. On the other hand the already visible phenomenon of people interested in a particular area finding each other on the Internet will become central for the development of self-unfolding groups.
The difference between consumers and producers will vanish more and more. Already today the user can configure complex commodities like cars or furniture to some degree, which makes virtually each product an individual one, fully customized to the needs of the consumer. This increasing configurability of products is a result of the always increasing flexibility of the production machines. If this is combined with good software you could initiate the production of highly customized material goods allowing a maximum of self-unfolding - from your web browser up to the point of delivery.
Machines will become even more flexible. New type of machines available for some years now - fabbers are already more universal in some areas than modern industrial robots, not to mention stupid machines like a punch. The flexibility of the machines is a result of the fact that material production is increasingly based on information. At the same time the increasing flexibility of the machines gives the users more room for creativity and thus for self-unfolding.
In a GPL society there is no more reason for a competition beyond the type of competition we see in sports. Instead various kinds of fruitful cooperation will take place. You can see that today not only in Free Software but also (partly) in science and for instance in cooking recipes: Imagine your daily meal if cooking recipes would be proprietary and available only after paying a license fee instead of being the result of a world-wide cooperation of cooks. “ (source: http://www.oekonux.de)