still/open

For my part in the ANAT Still/Open workshops I intend to explore modern free and open source software (FOSS)
tools and practices. Working with some powerful tools like the Debian/GNU linux operating system, and the Python programming language,
we can explore the Django web app contruction toolkit, see how easy it is to set up SMS services with free software, go through the new
video sharing community site package, Plumi, and build a google-maps enabled travel blog.
http://wiki.infiniterecursion.com.au/index.php/StillOpen

Hopefully during these practical workshops we will get to talk about the history of “community computing” as implied by the evolution of
FLOSS - the ideas behind it, the theory and the some of the “stars”.

Participants should have access to a GNU/Linux environment to do my workshops, so if you dont have this on your laptop already,
we will give you a live CD which should let you boot your laptop into a Debian GNU/Linux system running of the CD [this wont destroy any installed
OSs or data already on your harddive]. This will have all the right stuff on it for you to do the software experiments.
You can even use the CD after you leave the workshop, to boot up into Linux anytime.
Stay tuned for which CD image you can download before the workshop, to burn to a CD, and get familiar with before Still/Open starts.

EngageMedia , of which Im a part, just released the first version of Plumi on Wednesday 10th July 2007. (Technically its the first release candidate release which means we will be releasing the first version 0.1 marked as stable in the next coming weeks, after we wait and collect community feedback)

andy@engagemedia.org
May 2007

What happens when militantly free software, [1] the digital commons – a library stocked with applications, protocols, patterns and frameworks – and a community of interested, motivated peer collaborators are interwoven?

Digital fight-sharers imagine information theory, encoding algorithms and encryption technologies as a strong bridge of anonymity and privacy over a sea of public insecure data. Collectively from this networked media constellation robust peer to peer (p2p) distributed content sharing networks arise – organised using real-time networked audio-visual communications and content management system (CMS) to collaborate for low cost. In other words, we redesign the structure of our human telecommunications needs such that we understand and control all aspects of the infrastructure - a community-oriented convivial technology.

The menagerie of the latest open source frameworks cross many languages, databases, libraries and underlying computing models. Networking, object

managing frameworks like Zope, Twisted and Django slither along in the undergrowth, [2] and are occupying their space in the “web 2.0” universe. [3]Video sharing communities like EngageMedia are themselves based on such community built systems. [4] Collaborative CMS apps like Drupal, MediaWiki and WordPress, irradiate out from other active developer communities, generating weblogs, wikis, collaborative news, and group editable encyclopedias. [5] Twisting up the strands of open protocols and networked commodity hardware you can create communications structures such as real-time group text, chat and instant messaging – i.e., IRC networks, VOIP (voice over IP), email lists; and then link them all back together. [6] These systems help loop different communities back into the information commons, recursively amplifying feedback between participants and projects. [7]

Underneath the networked application stack – the browser and HTTP - lie stranger beasts. Audio-video codecs – coding and decoding algorithms – are fundamental to digital media. Some of these containers and codecs have corporate masters and some such as Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis, Xvid are patent-free. Players, transcoders, uploaders, downloaders, license tools and search tools let you explore the world of unencumbered re-mixable media. [8]

The coders behind these applications, libraries and other software artifacts are motivated by a spectrum of reasons; scratching itches, egoboo, earning cash, art theory or any combination. Most noticeably they are organised around different distributions of the packaging of free software operating systems and applications, such as Debian, Ubuntu or Gentoo. [9] Universities have been involved since the beginning and now corporate interests have invaded. Economically free services are everywhere, like the ubiquitous Google - but the business model cocoon of a commercial spectacle wrapped around the mass of user contributed content is a fragile compromise between unequal partners. The payoffs from mimicry and subversion of “vectoralist” interests are still large. [10]