Marije;
I also think that open source is not synonimous to independent. In fact one
> could say that open source is more dependent than closed source, since for
> it
> all to work it depends heavily on a large community.
>
Well, no, not synonymous but communities can collapse like companies can go
bankrupt and when that happens you would at least have a fighting chance to
keep using your instrument if you have the source.
Companies will sometimes have a interest in making it *harder* to use a
instrument. I'm thinking for example of Clavia trying to take Nord Modulars
off the second hand market in order to sell more G2's or Apple buying Logic
and dropping Windows support in order to sell more Mac's. It was especially
Clavia that scared me there, after I realised what was going on I promptly
stopped buying hardware that doesn't adhere to standards.
While this doesn't equate to independance per-se in open source I don't feel
people are trying to make me more dependant on them either. I the end we
will always depend on some people and some things, that's perfectly natural
and normal but personally I recomend running when you notice people are
trying to make you more dependant on them.
This is just one factor where I think the type of software used can affect
the artistic process. Another that intests me is that I feel it's natural
for a artists to want to understand the material (s)he works with on order
to be able to exert more control. I find it reasuring that when I'm
uncertain about the exact functioning of some feature in ChucK I can look at
the source and at times that's turned out to be the most efficient way. When
I have similar questions about closed source instruments I have to hope I
will be able to determine such things through trial and error. This becomes
especially important to me in the case of bugs and with some companies that
try to actively supress bugs becoming public. Of course that affects
everybody but it strikes me as especially relevant in the artistic process
where control or even just the experience of control can be at least as
important as the final results.
When Nick says such questions aren't the most important ones then I might
agree but I do think factors like this can affect the type of expression he
is after and can both help and harm such processes.
Yours,
Kas.
Received on Sat Aug 16 2008 - 16:01:08 BST