By Karen Rustad and Nelson Pavlosky

The topic of the Saturday noon peer production stream session was "Why don't artists use open source software?" However, as was quickly established by the panel, there was also an important companion question: "Why don't developers make free art?"

Artists feel pressured to use open software for ideological reasons, but when they try it typically the user interface is unfamiliar and difficult and some features they are used to are are missing. Thus, they switch back to Final Cut Pro/Acid/Photoshop and that is that.

Meanwhile, developers are pressured by artists to give them a better free alternative--to write an open program on the level of Final Cut Pro. Developers may see these feature requests as whiny (since few artists contribute to code) and, since they themselves are not usually artists, have no personal incentive to make those features happen. Developers have built free artistic software, but it is written by developers for developers with just the functionality that they need. Example: while GIMP/Inkscape work fine in Linux (which open source developers use), they are subject to the fickle whims of X11 on the top artistic platform, the Mac.

Other explanations for why artists do not adopt free software en masse were proposed.

First, most artists will continue to use whatever tools they are already used to using. One panelist stated that he's been using Adobe tools for 10 years, and it's really too late to convert him to anything else. He has become accustomed to the Adobe workflow, and it would require too much time for him to learn a different system regardless of how good a given free tool is. One way to combat this problem is to gain mindshare early on by getting free tools into schools and educational institutions, so that students learn to use the tools when they are young and perhaps more willing and able to try new things. Apple, Microsoft and other companies have long understood this, and that is why they offer educational discounts (or use strongarm tactics) to get their software into the hands of students. Educational initiatives like OLPC and student activists like FreeCulture.org have their work cut out for them, it seems!

Second, few artists feel any paranoia about the near-monopoly of Adobe in some artistic applications ironically because its standards are "open"--since other companies than read and write .psd, .ai, etc. they don't feel particularly worried about the possibility of Adobe going belly-up and leaving their art unreadable. However, this is also a plus because it reduces the transaction costs in switching to GIMP, etc. because open source programs would be able to read their old Photoshop files too.

Third, the open formats that the open source movement has created are in practice less accessible than proprietary ones. One videomaker remarked that she put her film online in Ogg Theora, the free video format, but her audience complained that they couldn't watch it. If the point of open formats and open software is universal usability, they have largely failed in practice because for non-Linux users they require special effort to read that other formats do not.

However, the differing needs of and small overlap between artists and open source developers seems to be the most fundamental problem.

One way to move past this deadlock is for more artists to become coders and more coders to become artists. There is precedent for this. Many artists historically have been hackers; video art in the 1950s, for instance, was dominated by art that hacked the electronics of cameras and television sets (c.f.: Nam June Paik). One panelist expressed concern that artists don't make their own tools the way that many used to, that they are using too many mainstream tools, whether those are proprietary or not. There are plenty of opportunities for creativity that can only be pursued if you know how to play with the underlying principles and workings of your medium--in the case of digital art, computer code. For a modern example, see the (sadly proprietary) rotoscoping software used to produce the visually stunning "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly." Developers already know how these things work, and should be encouraged to "get creative" and express themselves using them. Too much specialization can be a bad thing, and if there is no overlap between artists and programmers, then it will be difficult for them to help each other out. And just as artists need programmers to make tools for them, developers need artists to make their programs pretty and pleasant to use.

However, the main complaint is not the lack of creative tools; obviously some programmers had a but the lack of *professional-grade* creative tools, and few people are lucky enough to have jobs (and developed talents) that involve both art and code. In order to draw from the best of both worlds, it is necessary to get the two demographics to collaborate. Even if more people develop both artistic and programming skills, there will be a need for more artists and programmers to talk with one another and work together.

tags: DC United States media-events summit07 art opensource floss

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