X marks the spot
![Jon Jon](/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/online/blogs/paw-prints-writings-of-the-maddog/275394-9-eng-US/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog.png)
Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog
For the past couple of years I have been orchestrating a contest at Campus Party events in Spain, Brazil and Colombia which challenges a participant to make a video using only free software. This means that the participants have to create the video, edit the video, make the credits and produce a CD using only free software tools, and the entire presentation has to be licensed under a Creative Commons license.
The participants are given a list of possible software to use ahead of time, but they can use any software they want to use as long as it is either Free Software or Open Source. They do not know what the subject of the video will be until the first day of Campus Party, and since the judges need time to judge the entries as well as time to present the entries and the prizes, this often gives the participants only a couple of days to complete the project.
Creative Commons, of course, has encouraged lots of artists to license their music in creative ways and most recently there has been a band in Austria named Xbloome that not only created a freely licensed and downloadable CD's worth of songs from their album “X marks the spot” which they sell at concerts, in addition they only used Free Software to record, edit, mix and publish the CD and its associated jewel case artwork.
This would be quite enough, but our intrepid band also wrote up on their website the trials and tribulations of making sure that the entire work of art was sharable:
freely usable codecs
freely sharable fonts
freely sharable file formats
among other things so Xbloome could also publish their intermediate files, allowing people to “remix” both their artwork and their music. Often Xbloome found that while some items looked “Free” on the surface, as you tried to use them in real work there were often restrictions that kept you from distributing the results freely.
Proud of what Xbloome did, they stated on their web site that they were the first “completely free CD of music” published, only to be told by another artist, Dick MacInnis, that he had also produced a CD using only open software tools two years earlier, but had not stated that on the Internet. Dick ceeded that Xbloome could not have known that his CD was “free”, so they were the first to both produce the CD and then blog about how they made it, giving valuable information to those artists that want to do the same.
Another thing that Xbloome did was compare their previous CD, “...Done!”, which was “professionally” recorded with industry standard hardware and software with “X marks the spot” which was created, recorded, editied and mixed using Free Software and the artists themselves. Other professionals (both graphic artists and sound artists) could not determine that the output was not created by “professional” tools.
Why did Xbloome do this? In their own words from their web site:
Art (and especially music) exists because of interaction between people. Its existence and brilliance requires cultural, personal and all other kinds of exchange.
We were surprised that it's often not legally possible to share our experience, know-how and the fun we have with making music, if we use state-of-the-art, proprietary tools. And talking to other artists, VJs, etc. confirmed that their know-how was also locked to conditions/restrictions of a certain vendor.
Because these artificial restrictions are blocking creativity and exchange - we've decided to go open.
The only downside to all of this is that Xbloome used a Terratec 8 channel firewire external soundcard that had Linux support for their input, and this system has recently been discontinued by Terratec.
Hopefully Terratec will introduce other sound cards to replace what was obviously a very good piece of equipment, but in the meantime Xbloome can continue using the existing soundcard as the rest of the Free Software continues to improve.
Go to their site and read about them and how they made “X marks the spot”. Then make your own kind of music.
Carpe Diem!
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
![Learn More](https://www.linux-magazine.com/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/media/linux-magazine-eng-us/images/misc/learn-more/834592-1-eng-US/Learn-More_medium.png)
News
-
NVIDIA Released Driver for Upcoming NVIDIA 560 GPU for Linux
Not only has NVIDIA released the driver for its upcoming CPU series, it's the first release that defaults to using open-source GPU kernel modules.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 24.07 Released
If you’re into rolling release Linux distributions, OpenMandriva ROME has a new snapshot with a new kernel.
-
Kernel 6.10 Available for General Usage
Linus Torvalds has released the 6.10 kernel and it includes significant performance increases for Intel Core hybrid systems and more.
-
TUXEDO Computers Releases InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 Laptop
Sporting either AMD or Intel CPUs, the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 is an extremely compact, lightweight, sturdy powerhouse.
-
Google Extends Support for Linux Kernels Used for Android
Because the LTS Linux kernel releases are so important to Android, Google has decided to extend the support period beyond that offered by the kernel development team.
-
Linux Mint 22 Stable Delayed
If you're anxious about getting your hands on the stable release of Linux Mint 22, it looks as if you're going to have to wait a bit longer.
-
Nitrux 3.5.1 Available for Install
The latest version of the immutable, systemd-free distribution includes an updated kernel and NVIDIA driver.
-
Debian 12.6 Released with Plenty of Bug Fixes and Updates
The sixth update to Debian "Bookworm" is all about security mitigations and making adjustments for some "serious problems."
-
Canonical Offers 12-Year LTS for Open Source Docker Images
Canonical is expanding its LTS offering to reach beyond the DEB packages with a new distro-less Docker image.
-
Plasma Desktop 6.1 Released with Several Enhancements
If you're a fan of Plasma Desktop, you should be excited about this new point release.