The goal of the award winning apertus° project is to create free and open technology for todays professional cinema and film production landscape and make all the generated knowledge freely available. It all started with creating an open modular camera system consisting of several hardware and software parts using Elphel™ hardware. Now with the efforts to build the very first open digital cinema camera AXIOM from scratch the apertus° project has evolved to the next level: into a platform for film-makers, creative industry professionals, artists and enthusiasts. apertus° is more than just a software/hardware collection, it's a knowledge library, an ecosystem of people supporting each other and advocating freedom.