Month: April 2005

Bounty Hunters

The GPL would fit into the metaphor as a neighbourhood watch, or the right of the individual to bear arms…

Both essays are highly recommended, “Gift Domain” was pivotal for me in gaining an understanding of how and why a Free Culture should work.

The bounty hunter metaphor is excellent for copyrights, but I don’t think it works for patents. Patents are more of a protection racket, or a way of declaring certain criminals untouchable. This is possibly an example of Stallman’s complaint that the idea of IP law leads us to make misleading generalisations, or possibly it’s just an example of me reading something too fast because I’m enjoying it too much. 🙂

http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=349&fid=6&sid=17

Wikipedia article linked to in the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_culture

Two things about the idea of an “Open Source Culture”.

Firstly, it does make sense to provide the source material for your work. Be it preparatory sketches, midi files and sample banks, character and plot notes or earlier drafts of stage notes. The principle and advantages are the same as for software: others can learn from, remake and build on your work. As a visual artist I have encountered works that I couldn’t understand without the preparatory sketches and that were wonderful when I got the hang of them, and I’ve seen reproductions of lost works that are the only surviving record of them. I’ve made versions of works from preparatory sketches, and used unrealised ideas to make completed works.
I wish there was a Creative Commons “Provide Source” module, a “CC-PS”.

Secondly, “Open Source” is a weasel term designed not to scare incumbent corporates. It has no moral or ideological power to describe or to direct, it merely describes a decontextualised, dehistoricised way of working that is cheaper for businesses to use. “Free Software”, the term that Open Source was designed to disempower, is a much better term, more descriptive and with a clearer sense of purpose, as is the cultural equivalent “Free Culture”. The economic advantages of Free Software are a side-effect of its moral basis. Open Source obscures this, and without a firm moral basis it can neither defend nor maintain its social and economic advantages. It cannot answer questions of direction or purpose, only of monetary value. A merely Open Source culture will share these problems, a Free Culture will not.

Stallman is clear on the failings of Open Source:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

Article I’m sure I’ve posted before but found again whilst writing this:

http://www.nothing.org/osc/WhyArtShouldBeFree.htm

Article that would be a lot less confused with the idea of Free Culture to guide it rather than the idea of Open Source Culture to mislead it:

http://rejon.org/writings/openSourceArt/openSourceArt-phillips.pdf

The mighty Saul Albert on Open Source Art:

http://chinabone.lth.bclub.org.uk/~saul/docs/mirrors/saul/os.htm

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/15/nins_trent_reznor_re.html

Macintosh “Garage Band” archive of the track.

Are NIN fans called Ninnies? ;-P

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146567&cid=12279170

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002282.html

I use Inkscape when I can. I use Illustrator for envelopes, perspective, and Boolean operations.
I should use minara, but it smells of mothballs.

http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/

Good critique:

Little Britain