Open source ecology is sharing, sharing with no limitations; “copyleft”, or with attribution; “creative commons”. Open source ecology is an attitude towards software and hardware, it is about developing and user and producer relationship. It’s a user based iterative process.
With copyleft media you are not limited, you can remix, rework and alter existing work. Whatever you produce is then free to be remixed or altered itself. It is copyright laws and corporations that restrict remixing.



There is a revolution in media and its based around the need for a new model, one to incorporate the desire to remix and rework.

Lwarence lessig wrote about copyleft and creative commons (hybrid economy – Lawrence lessig). There are many open source websites and software available. In this unit so far we have explored just a few, inkscape and fontforge. Vector graphics software, type design respectively.
Online there are many websites designated to sharing media and information. Wikimedia, openmedia, Gutenberg.org. these websites are live amd allow people to share designs and leave you with the control. Compare this to facebook, youtube, google and twitter “walled gardens” a term used to describe large corporations who make you believe you are dictating whats happening but you have to agree to terms and conditions, control is centralized, you are working within restrictions. The same way graphic designers are limited by copyright laws.

FontForge is a powerful 'open source' software system offering practically all the features of FontLab

Inkscape - Open source vector graphics editor, provides services similar to Adobe Illustrator

Gimp is an open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop, its is a image manipulation tool.

This website has been created for education purpose only it is not in anyway intended to make a profit. Module of Authorship & Interaction for the BA (Hons) Graphics & Comunication Design

Jasper Shiner (c) 2013

Documentation and Exploration MGRA 501.1

Open source ecology allows the user to be more connected with the developers, therefore software can be tailor made for you the user without information having to pass through a huge hierarchy which you get with large corporations. Its an iterative cycle of development and sharing between user and creator.

A pioneer in Open Source & Software Freedom Activist Richard Stallman aim is to get the world embracing and using open source software. It all started when he thought ' Why cant we share with people? why must we be constrained to the Software creators and large corporations?

'Richard Stallman' wrote the 'GNU' Manifesto when he founded the 'GNU' Project. GNU is a
Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU Project.