Thursday, April 20, 2006
Open source in the age of digital reproduction
During the intimate dinner that followed Stuart Moulthrop's presentation at Penn last night, a question came up about whether digital artists' are willing to share their source code with their readers. The short answer seems to be no.
A quick turn through the Electronic Literature Organization's directory found no links to source code. (Straight DHTML doesn't count, since it's embedded in the page, just a right-click away.) And another quick turn through the recent e-fest participants didn't turn up anything either.
Hmmm.....
From the GNU project:
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
There seems to be a bit of a disconnect here. Could it be that digital artists are as jealous of their code as are developers of software for business? More philosophcally aligned with Bill Gates than Linus Torvalds? Gatekeepers to the proprietary?
BTW: You can have my source when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
# posted by Jim @ 9:05 AM 
