admin

What Does "Open'' Mean in Digital Arts?

Florian Cramer erörtert in seinem Text was "Offenheit" für die Kunst bedeuten kann.

Die "Free Software Foundation" definert Freie Software nach folgenden Kriterien.

• 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.

Cramer formuliert nun "Offenheit" nicht nur bezüglich einer Praxis des Copyleft, sondern eben auch bezüglich einer technischen Offenheit:

"If we look at the material and immaterial carriers of traditional arts, we see that they all could be called ``open platforms'': Canvas, paper and books, marble, musical score notation, language. Their manufacturing and internal structure was open and transparent in that they weren't proprietarized by monopolies. Any manufacturer or artist can produce them either commercially or noncommercially.
[...]
The historical example of a proprietary piece of software that obscured the distinction of authoring software and file format was Apple's HyperCard program. In the late 1980s, HyperCard was extremely popular among digital artists as a combined hypertext, multimedia and programming environment. Although most artistic work done in HyperCard was public domain and could be modified up to the level of its scripting algorithms, it is factually lost today after Apple discontinued developing HyperCard and older versions no longer run on the present MacOS. Unlike in the transition from VHS or UMatic to DVD, there is no way of transferring the old HyperCard data into a newer format like, for example, script-generated HTML. This explains why Free Software and open standards are attractive for digital artists because they provide the only alternative to vendor lock-in. If HyperCard had been Free Software according to the definition I gave at the beginning of my talk, even artists without programmer's skills could have taken the sourcecode of the program and commission, perhaps against payment, other programmers to port and maintain the code for today's operating systems and PC architectures, or they could commission a software converter from HyperCard to script-generated HTML. I am afraid that we will see the same story happening again with Flash. The work of what Lev Manovich calls the ``Generation Flash'' is doomed because it is encumbered into non-open software and will vanish with it. This example also shows why free software is not about freedom for programmers, but about freedom for users."

Auf jeden Fall lesenswert.

 	 

		 christoph  | 
		Freedom | 
         Kommentare (105) |
         Trackbacks (45) |
		Permalink | 
		(884)