Free Software for Free Sound

Index

Free Software and Open Source

Why?

Arts and Free Software

Free Software and Linux for Audio and Music

Conclusions

What is Free Software?

Freedom 1: unlimited use for any purpose

Freedom 2: freedom to study and adapt to your own needs

Freedom 3: freedom to copy

Freedom 4: freedom to redistribute

Free (Libre) as in Freedom not as in Beer

Freedom is kept through the viral license policy (mainly GPL)

The Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman:

Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free.

To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others. Free software has become the foundation of a learning society where we share our knowledge in a way that others can build upon and enjoy.

The FSF campaigns for free software adoption and against proprietary software. Threats to free software include Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), Software Patents and Treacherous Computing. Find out more about our campaigns, and ways to volunteer.

Open Source

Open Source (OSI) is an initiative that starts in 1998 mainly because of personal differences between the founder of the FSF and OSI.

It abandons idealistic thinking related to Free Software and only promotes practical advantages related to being able to read the code of a piece of software.

As a result of that there are now about 50 approved different open source licenses, even some by Microsoft..

Names and Dates

Richard Stallman Starts the GNU Project (1983) Defines Free Software (1985) Introduces the GPL (free software license) (1985)

Linus Torvald Develops the Linux kernel (1991)

Eric Raymond Founder of the Open Source Initiative (1998)

Technical/Practical advantages of FLOSS

Code is revised by many developers

Security (kerchoff's principle)

Estability

Collaborative effort of large communities

Price

Although interesting, there are even more important reasons...

FLOSS and Economy

Proprietary software by definition favors monopolies

that then extend to hardware

FLOSS does not kill software industry

FLOSS can be comercial

It promotes the culture of paying for services, not arbitrarily priced licences

Large companies like IBM or Novell are already basing part of their business around FLOSS

FLOSS and Education

Education should be worried about learning and learning is promoted through a free and open access to information (e.g. libraries)

Technology is more than a tool: it is a learning environment in itself

Within education we must present with several perspectives and favor criticism and dialog

University teaches how to learn not how to use a particular tool

Coding is not only for programmers but for scientists, artists, children...

FLOSS and Science

Scientific method depends in many senses on the free exchange of knowledge and ideas

Nowadays implementation is actually part of the result

Software is and should be considered in many cases like some other sort of publication

With Free Software we:

Facilitate for others to compare results

Preserve knowledge

Social and Ethical aspects

Access to software determines people's ability to:

Communicate

Educate

Work

Software should be considered as cultural heritage

Software will condition more and more the vision of the world new generations have

Who should control these aspects of society? A single

company? Two companies?

Art and Free Software

Piece of Art = Content + Techniques

In order to fully understand a piece of art we need to understand the techniques

Digital Piece of Art = Content + Techniques + System

In order to fully undertand a digital piece of art we also need to understand the system and be able to access it to the lowest level (code!)

Free Expression and Free Software

There is no Free Expression without control of the Tools you use (agnula.org)

Would Mozart have composed a line of music for an instrument he wasn't exactly sure what was doing internally or producing its sound?

Would Michelangelo have painted the Sixtine Chapel using a strange device that might have been recording his personal conversations while painting

An artist needs to be in full control of the tools (be able to modify, adapt, copy, redistribute...)

This can be done personally or through trusted technical staff

Digital Art Heritage

In order to preserve a digital piece of art we need to preserve the system

Systems that are closed and proprietary in general cannot be preserved

There are already key compositions in Computer Music that have already been lost because the original (closed) system cannot be reproduced

Digital Art Preservation = FLOSS

Creative Commons

In music mainly Creative Commons Lisences are used to share and remix music.The Free Software Foundation has only approved two of the 6 available CC Licenses as being free:CC-BY v2.0 CC-BY-SA v2.0

Sound/Music vs. Video/Image

Due to amazing pressure by Record Industry (through RIAA, SGAE...) implementing a website such as Flicker or YouTube in the sound/music world is extremely difficult Artists are sometimes not even allowed to post their own content in their websites

See http://freesound.iua.upf.edu or http://www.ccmixter.org/

Linux and Audio

There are plenty of applications, even distributions for Linux audio (visit linuxsound.org)Kguitar

Amarok

Ardour

Rosegarden

Muse

Rosegarden

Planet CCRMA

Agnula

etc.

Linux and Audio

Gnu/Linux has unique and outstanding features for professional audio and music:

Low latency

Stability

Standard protocols

Very active community

...

Free Software and Audio

So what about other platforms?

Most of the previous apps are compatible with Windows/OSX

But if you are not going to use proprietary software... what is the point of not using Linux?

What Gnu/Linux?

Because the code of gnu/linux is available to everyone there are now many different Linux system available. A few popular:

Ubuntu a good distribution for beginners

Debian where Ubuntu is based on

Fedora

Gentoo for the more expierenced users

GnewSense totally free Linux distro

Dynebolic (multi-media distro) Etc.. See: http://distrowatch.com/

(cd's can be ordered there at low costs, but you can also download all of these distro's from their original websites)

Links

http://www.linux-sound.org

http://www.opsound.org/

http://www.jamendo.com

Conclusions

Free Software = Open Source + Freedom

Freedom of Expression => Free Software

The future of digital arts is at stake

If you are convinced to use FLOSS there is no reason not to use Linux

If developing your own app. try to first see if you can build it out of an existing open framework.

License

This presentation is a remix of a presentation by Xavier Amatriain /University of California

It is available under this license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

The originial can be found here:http://www.slideshare.net/xamat/free-software-for-free-sound-1824828