"Open Source", "Free Software" and other beasts | ||
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Some people have tried to wonder what would the implications of the "free as in free speech" nature of free software be for other types of digital media that are not software: readable text documents, images and art, audio files, video, etc. The result is a proliferation of the "free" and "open" adjectives to other content besides software: "open/free documentation", "open/free content", "open/free art", etc.
Note that allowing free distribution of an original piece of content does not automatically make it free, if it cannot be modified and incorporated into other works. Moreover, the fact that a document, an image or a song are freely available on the Internet, does not make them legally freely distributable, which is a pre-condition for making them free.
I've encountered some cases of documents, images, etc distributed that qualify as open-content. Most of these had been technical documents or books describing a software package, or art that accompanied them. There are some artists and vendors out there who support people freely distributing their work, while still not making it fully free as in free speech.
Eric Raymond noted once that books, audio files, etc. usually don't need to be debugged or extended. A software is a useful tool, but other types of content are not tools by themselves. Therefore, making them free instead of just freely distributable usually gives little advantage to the community at large.
With the propagation of powerful computers, and fast computer communication, I believe eventually most if not all content will become freely distributable, whether legally or de-facto. I don't think it implies that the media industry has anything to worry about, because even with the digital media completely available, people still buy books, CDs, DVDs, magazines and newspapers and similar physical implementations of the media.
Only time can tell whether other elements of open source besides its freely distributable nature will have an impact in other areas of creative arts besides software.