Hello Jon,
Jon Ippolito said :
> > ...why [copyleft] was picked up by
> > artists and intellectuals is still not entirely clear to me...
>
> Are you sure who was first?
>
> "Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as
> breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free." --Richard
> Stallman, GNU Manifesto, 1985
>
> "Computers are bringing about a situation that's like the invention of
> harmony. Subroutines are like chords. No one would think of keeping a
> chord to himself. You'd give it to anyone who wanted it. You'd welcome
> alterations of it. Subroutines are altered by a single punch. We're
> getting music made by man himself, not just one man." --John Cage,
> 1969.
You have a good point, as Armin pointed out also, artists have a long
history of finding ways to experience, practice, contribute and
speculate on the nature and production of knowledge.
However, I am not asking who was the first. I am asking why artists and
intellectuals have picked so passionately the copyleft principle.
With copyleft I mean the principle derived from the GNU Manifesto and
that can be found at various intensity in most free culture licenses.
(http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses)
> > sharing ... software source code is not
> > quite like the source of a text, the source of an image, music, a work
> > of art...
>
> For digital "mother" files, which may include Photoshop layers,
> Garageband instruments, or Processing source code, I believe there is
> a clear parallel. That's why the Open Art License includes a "view
> source" requirement:
>
> http://three.org/openart/license/
Processing source code, yes. It's software.
It's straightforward because source code is defined very simply. It's
plain text that is fed into a compiler or an interpreter. No more no
less.
The problem is that there is not such a clear boundary for images and
sound. It is true that some licenses like the one you mention, require
the source of the file. So you cannot just distribute a flatten/mixed
down output. You need to provide the sources. But what sources are we
talking about? In graphic design, source material is commonly used to
refer to any third party and external files used to create an original
digital document. Said differently, sources are not the layers.
For instance, let's say you take a picture of a cat and decide to add a
caption to it.
You import the photo as layer and start to crop/manipulate/filter it.
Would not it make sense to provide these transformations as well, and
not just their flatten down outcome? What about the original photo?
Should it be provided as a separate file, which resolution is enough?
What about the font used? Do you distribute it as well with your
.psd file? Not doing it would prevent the work to be fully modifiable,
but is the font license compatible with the way you intend to
distribute it? Etc.
Not quite as simple as source code.
Of course nothing could prevent the author(s) of the license you use to
redefine "sources" and be specific about all the possible cases, for
instance requiring to enable the recording of the edit history of the
.psd in case you use photoshop, or provide any crude or granular version
control of n steps before "freezing" a layer. It could be also required
to provide any external raster/vector material used, provide font files,
etc. That sounds like a never ending job to me if you need to take into
account the meaning of "sources" in every single existing and future
techniques, practices, frameworks and methods in the different artistic
fields.
(and I won't go even into trying to define sources in the context of
works of art, such as paintings, sculptures, that are distributed with a
Free Art License).
a.
--
http://su.kuri.mu
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