Hiho,
On Saturday 16 August 2008 09:08:25 Kassen wrote:
> Maybe I should have said 'build your own in principle'. My understanding is
>
> > that there are only a few companies in the world who make the chips we
> > depend on. Now, they have good reason to be open about the chip
> > specification, but I think I was worrying about 'where it ends' if you
> > start demanding independence, and how independent you could ever really
> > be...
>
> Well, I think the single most popular platform in computing ever, the
> "IBM-compatible" (which now even includes Apple) got where it is by being
> open. You can get hardware that conforms to that standard from any number
> of manufacturers without a need to depend on a single one and because it's
> standardised your choice of OS's is quite large on that platform as well.
To get back to building your own hardware... when I grew up my dad was
building his own UNIX machine from scratch and apparently the machine was in
use for years after and more used by his colleagues at work than the newer
commercial machines they had available. Probably the machine still works if
we'd hook it up again...
Not sure how this is relevant, but it should make clear that you can build
your own machine if you want.
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.
> > I still personally find the call exclusive, rather than open, but readily
> > concede that it definitely sets up a compositional constraint some might
> > enjoy.
Well, I think it is less constraining than composition calls which call for
compositions for a specific instrumental ensemble.
> > None of this is meant to be inflammatory, just expressing some concerns.
>
> I'm not sure about Marije but I feel your concerns are entirely healthy and
> to me it's clear that a debate like this is exactly what these constraints
> were meant to encourage, probably in adition to showing the world what can
> be acomplished with open/free tools, something I suspect many people aren't
> as aware of as we here are.
I think this last aspect is quite important. To raise public awareness that
you can achieve a lot with open/free tools will encourage more people to even
start making stuff, not being faced with huge investments which are beyond
their reach. Festivals which put these open source tools in the spotlight
will achieve such awareness. And let artists who use these tools run less
often into reactions like: "is SuperCollider actually running on Linux?".
> Perhaps it would be nice to be inflamatory, there are important questions
> here and it would be troublesome if people *didn't* have strong feelings
> about their instruments but I suspct we already agree on most counts.
Personally for me, with hardware and software being my main tools to make
stuff, I do need these to be free, so that if I'd want, I can look into how
it works to learn more about it.
To me, open source is quite similar to the ideal of a free science.
So it raises interesting challenges also in the area of safety...
With companies protecting their in house knowledge, engineers there are often
faced with ethical concerns regarding the safety of the product they develop
versus the pressure of boards of directors. In many cases they cannot be open
about their results, and they have to decide whether to risk their job and
talk to the press, or not.
For the general safety this is a dangerous thing, as in the end those who find
their own personal job more important than the safety of the use of their
product are the ones ending up in these jobs.
On the other hand I do understand that the European (and Western) culture
comes from a long tradition of closedness of technological knowledge (compare
the medieval guild structure for different crafts/trades), so it will not be
easy to create a counterstream to this.
sincerely,
Marije
Received on Sat Aug 16 2008 - 15:04:47 BST