jspaleta: GSoC is interesting but.......

Jef Spaleta (

jspaleta) wrote,
@ 2008-04-02 10:50:00

GSoC is interesting but.......
what would it look like if we thought of independent open source developers as artists, with a full range of support opportunities from 1-month grants to multi-year residencies backed by a large assortment of overlapping groups at the local, state and national levels.

Who wants to help fund the operating costs of an open developers commune in the Alaskan wilderness? Where a group of open source developers live in relative isolation as a group for several months and concentrate on creating?

-jef

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Open development consortiums

iquaid
2008-04-02 08:03 pm UTC (link)

I wonder why corporations don't create more open development consortiums to solve common problems? They leave it all up to us mere mortals. Couldn't a well-funded consortium support your grants/residencies to work on a range of problems?

See, that's the way the artist patronage systems have worked, where the artist has to do some family portraits in exchange for room, board, stipend, and time/space to create what else they like. At least, it could have worked that way. :)

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Re: Open development consortiums

jspaleta
2008-04-02 08:18 pm UTC (link)

I totally agree.. that's how its worked for artists. There's lots of corporate sponsorship floating around to support 'art'.. never enough support to support everything of course..but the structures are there in terms of grants and fellowships and what not to give freelance 'artist' time to create non-commercial work.

But I don't think people think about open source developers as artists..so they don't think to apply the same support structures.

Can we help change that? Can we... paint a picture... of independant open source developers as artists?

-jef

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Re: Open development consortiums

http://openid.aol.com/StephenSmoogen
2008-04-02 08:25 pm UTC (link)

I think the big issue is that Computer Coding is split between Art and Science. I would put most computer code more in the Art side.. especially when some developer has a prima donna meltdown because no one can see the beauty of their idea :). However, we sell ourselves as scientists who use MATH(TM) to solve the worlds problems.. and businesses are used to dealing with scientists in a completely different way.

It probably also deals with the fact that art grants can't be patented or be seen by the tax authorities as helping a companies bottom line while say improving the gcc compiler by some loons in the Yukon could be.

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Why not a traveling commune

http://openid.aol.com/StephenSmoogen
2008-04-02 08:22 pm UTC (link)

A funny re-occuring dream I have is where coders are like rockstars who travel the country in their busses and RV's.. going from gig to gig. While I am just another sysadmin-roadie.. I get to travel in my RV with tons of routers and storage ready to set up for the next big project.

Of course... the dream has a nightmare side: picture Gafton or Seth dressed up in KISS makeup doing a coding gig in front of all these high school geeks crying out for a procedure encore.

Anyway.. I would love to have the funding for that :).

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	yeah tieguy.org 2008-04-02 08:43 pm UTC (link)
	Seth Nickel and I used to talk about doing a software commune, though he was angling for Detroit (dirt cheap cool old lofts) and I was pushing for Costa Rica (cheap, warm.) The trick is really just building the culture that will support it- patronage is basically as old as art (someone brought the meat back to the caves at Lascaux) and not so common for software yet. (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: yeah

jspaleta
2008-04-02 11:29 pm UTC (link)

So... how do we sell the idea of Open Development as art..deserving of patronage. We know the model, but how do we get the meme out there?

I'm sure there are art grants that focus on interactive art. Can we propose an open development project that falls into that category and compete for a grant to get the ball rolling at changing the perception about what open developers are doing?

For example... there's an art installation here that takes real time geophysical data from the university and turns it into an audio visual art installation experience. Can we do something like that as an open project as a piece of 'desktop' art for the computer that can be easily understood as 'art' and compete the idea for an art grant?

-jef

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	Re: yeah tieguy.org 2008-04-02 11:35 pm UTC (link)
	dunno. I think maybe part of the problem is that very little software is opinionated enough/good enough? Like, I don't ever like to curse at art, and I curse at most software all the time. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: yeah tieguy.org 2008-04-03 03:09 am UTC (link)
	Oh, and it would help if the art could be produced by individual artists. You might still have a commune, but art-by-committee (which most software is) is hard to call art or get funding for. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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