Written by French digital artisit Isabel Saij

Or... an easy way to study art and ICT for education, drawing on my personal experience of how I came to use open source software and licences, and some of the benefits for the educational system.

Open source software and licenses : a rational choice for artists

Since the mid 90s more and more artists are using ICT for their creative work. Among them, a highly active and dynamic group decided to use open source software like The Gimp, Pure Data and later Blender, Inkscape, Kino, Cinelerra, Processing, Scribus, etc. Because digital creations, like software, are immaterial, a new development came with the extesion of floss licences (like the GPL) to other creative work: the free art licence and creative commons were laucnhed in 2000/2001.

I'd like to explain why I changed my practice :

• from a mac user, and later windows user too, working with proprietary software, acting as a traditional copyright holder...
• to a linux user, working with free software and acting as a copyleft activist

Back in 2000 I wanted to show my digital works on a personal website. Finally in 2002 I published my first website with 2d and 3d works.Together with Adobe GoLive I got LiveMotion and made a netart site in 2003 with interactive pieces.

And the copyright issue? I had to cope with that question before I put my website online. One point was obvious, there was no way really to protect creations on internet. Either you don't publish your work online or you publish it and you know it will be copied, remixed, modified...

Dealing with copyright, I came across a movement called “copyleft attitude” and the ‘free art license”. At the same time, Adobe took the decision to stop “LiveMotion”, the software I used to make my interactive pieces. I've paid for it, I've spent time to learn it, to create interactive pieces... and it was over!

No more hesitation: I was ready for a copyleft website which I launched in 2003: http://saij-copyleft.net/

In the following years I was upset by the hellish cycle: new OS, new hardware, new software, and so on, none of which I could afford, not to mention the frequent lack of interoperability, and some very expensive updates (Maxon Cinema 4D, Bodypaint, etc...).

At the same time, open source software reached a very high level of sophistication: the Gimp was a very effective tool for my creations, either drawings or phots manipulations. I made also a number of copyleft logos as 3d animations with Blender. Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu Studio, Dynebolic) also became more attractive and usable for someone like me.

All this led me to create, as far as possible, work within an entirely “open frame”

• linux
• open source software.
• open format.
• open licenses.

It was a hard job, but in 2008, I published a second copyleft website, http://saij-copyleft2.net/ which is still a work in progress.

Benefits for education

To study art and ICT is now common. Digital works made by artists give an opportunity to consider both fields at the same time, and hybridization is now well known for being a source of innovation. Creative works made with open source software and released under a « free » licence appear of great value in that context :

• resources : it's easy to find creative works made with open source programs and published under a free licence. Using some key words and a search engine or diving into wikipedia will give a number of possibilities. The ranges of works and techniques make it easy to find something to study.
• copyright : it's very simple to cope with the conditions given by creative commons, copyleft and free art licenses: legal use means a lot in education!
• costs : no fee, no royalty to copy and/or study the creative works.
• access to the original files ( like.xcf or .blend) allows to give a look to the creative process.
• equity : everyone can get open source software and creative works.
• portability : the open source programs, and even whole operating systems, can be placed on a bootable usb device.
• innovation, research and development are part of the creative process of Many artists.

To conclude, I have two hopes:

• That readers will want to look at the creative works under "free licenses"
• That in future the creation of an online resource bank with digital works released under "free licenses"

Seeing both of these happen would be a wonderful confirmation of my joining the copyleft artist community.

(Published under the Free Art Licence and CC by-sa)