[iDC] mining open source
Derek Holzer
derek at umatic.nl
Wed Mar 8 01:11:28 EST 2006
Hi Adam and the list,
and allow me to "de-lurk". My name is Derek Holzer, and although I've
met quite a few iDCers already, I guess I could sum myself up as both a
sound/media artist and a freelance educator, giving workshops
specializing in the use of FLOSS tools for artists.
adam wrote:
> It seems to me that the real choker in the education system, preventing FLOSS from flourishing, is the university bureaucracy. Recently I have illicited
> feedback on a proposal for a project to support design schools (and one one audio academy) to use FLOSS tools. Some of the feedback I got from educators was their
> fear that educational institutions don't know how 'not to buy' software. How does a university budget for free tools?
This question comes up quite a bit in one of the developers' communities
I'm most involved in--the Pure Data community. Many people feel it would
not be unethical in the least to "charge" universities and institutions
for FLOSS applications if these institutions have something to give. By
actually putting something of their budget into FLOSS, the universities
still win out. They are supporting the development of critical, relevant
cultural projects as well as investing in tools which the students can
actually take home and use both during and after their educational
process. University computers labs these days still tend to be underused
mausoleums of expensive soft and hardware for the simple reason that
students have limited access to them during their schooling and usually
can't afford them afterwards. The film and music departments at the
University of Milwaukee, where I lectured last week, have seriously
taken up Pure Data as an alternative to Max/MSP just so that students
can actually do their homework at home with it without paying expensive
license fees.
In a community-developed project such as PD, however, the other bigger
question is what to do with such institutional contributions. Although
the core parts of both Ardour and PD are written largely by single
individuals, the way these cores are expanded upon differ greatly. PD
has been greatly expanded by a developer community working almost
completely independently from the original author Miller S. Puckette,
while Ardour programmer Paul Davis keeps his contributors working very
close at hand. Add to this the fact that Puckette is a tenured professor
at UCSD, with PD existing as part of his regular academic publishing
cycle, while Davis supports Ardour privately via revenue generated by
his previous job building Amazon.com and you'll see that the financial
situation of almost each and every FLOSS tool can be radically different.
On the PD list, code "bounties" were suggested by some, where
programmers who could implement in-demand features would benefit from
any financial income. But I think Adam is much closer on target when he
points out that FLOSS is not usually lacking in features so much as in
documentation. I think documentation "bounties" might be one way to
handle the situation. The other might be to hire on some specialist from
the developer or user community of the project for such a period of time
as it takes to produce adequate documentation, which in turn would
benefit everyone.
best,
d.
--
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
---Oblique Strategy # 121:
"Mute and continue"
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