Wizards of OS (Wizards of Operating Systems, or "WOS") is a Berlin-based conference.
Its topics are the cultural and political potentials of free software, software technology, digital networks and media, and more generally information freedom and open cooperation in the creation and proliferation of knowledge. The conference is interdisciplinary and aims to be a platform of exchange between, chiefly, scientists, engineers, social researchers, scholars from the humanities, artists and activists.
The name is a word play on Wizard of Oz. The acronym OS stands for operating system (not open source).
The first Wizards of OS conference took place in 1999, the third conference in 2004 had the topic "The Future of the Digital Commons" and featured, among others, the launch of the German translation of the Creative Commons licenses.
The Wizards of OS 4 took place from September 14 to September 16, 2006. Some of the topics were the future of Creative Commons, open music and the compensation of artists and European copyright legislation. Larry Sanger announced an initial proposal of his project Citizendium.