[iDC] mining open source

[Derek Holzer]

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"