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How To Make Money With Free Software
fons writes "Dutch Python hacker/artist Stani took part in a contest organised by the Dutch Ministry Of Finance to design a 5 euro commemorative coin. And he won, using only free software: 'The whole design was done for 100% with free software. The biggest part consists of custom software in Python, of course within the SPE editor. For the visual power I used PIL and pyCairo. From time to time also Gimp, Inkscape and Phatch helped quite a bit. All the developing and processing was done on GNU/Linux machines which were running Ubuntu/Debian. I would have loved to release the coin under the GPL, which could maybe solve the financial crisis. However for obvious reasons I was not allowed to do that.'"
Or the purpose of the article is to bring light to the fact that he won the contest using only FOSS software, and they chose the title of "How to Make Money" as a pun, where you would assume they meant "how to profit", but they literally meant "how to design money".
By what name do you wish to be mourned?
You could have the same title for an article about an author that wrote a book using OpenOffice.
Slashdot actually rejected my submission when I did just that. It's a pity, too; Return of Macbeth is an instant classic.
This guy won due to superior design, not due to the fact that he used free software. The free software is in the background, contributing but almost incidental to the final product. That's how is should be though. Free software released the artist from the constraints of having to fit in with someone else's idea of what software or technology he should be allowed to use, leaving him free to be creative and follow his own unique path.
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This guy is a master of symbolic design. He's the modern heir of the artistic geniuses who did all the dense symbolic religious iconography in early christian churches and for secret societies. It's perfectly fitting, since architecture, particularly classical architecture, is loaded with design secrets and hidden meanings, and the coin is about architecture. This coin being loaded with dense symbolism and being about architecture, I hope there's something masonic hidden on it somewhere. I assume the masons were active in The Netherlands?
My question is - did he just use open-source on principle, or did it confer an advantage on doing this project over the commercial alternatives? Or was it harder to do it with the open source software? Clearly it involved a lot of custom scripting. Did he go as far as to look at the source code to accomplish this, or dig into the software in other ways that couldn't be done with closed source? Anybody know?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
...it made me giggle with joy to see the guy mention he won against people using Adobe products. I teach Adobe products to impressionable college students, and when they sign up to take my class and purchase their own copy of Photoshop or Illustrator, boy do they think they have ARRIVED in cool-town. Many of my new students think that once they *understand* how to use Photoshop better than most, they are now a graphic designer, creative person, illustrator, web designer, etc.
So I started doing an extra credit assignment where I tell them they are not allowed to use Adobe products, and they have to design a postcard. They use any package they want; most use GIMP or Inkscape because they're free. Without fail, they come back and say, "hey, I can't do anything with this. It's not Adobe. It sucks." So I point out to them that their Adobe software skills make them think they're pretty good at design. But what happened to their awesome design skills when they started using another software package? Does the software really suck, or do they just hate it because of its non-Adobeness? I show them nicely-done work by other GIMP or Inkscape users. Blank looks. Lesson ensues.
Relying on a specific software package is fine. *Depending* on it is risky. And *not being able* to design using anything else because of some marketing-infused mental block just means you're spoiled and/or ignorant. Bravo for the true creativity displayed in the article.
For the humor-impaired, it's a pun:
make (earn) money vs. make (design) money
referring to the often asked question, how do you make money with free software.
get it?
But he was *making money*, get it? Coin - money...
Anyway, the interesting thing here is not that he designed something with free software, people do that all the time, but that his design won. Of course I didn't read the article, but A assume his was not the only entry, and that at least some other entries were prepared with proprietary software.
So it wouldn't be "an author wrote a book using OpenOffice" but rather "a book written using OpenOffice won some prize". Of course books created by free software regularly win top places at typography contests, so it would still not be that unusual.
There is, however, certain feeling among both professionals and public that in the area of graphics design, proprietary software rules, and using free software gives you a serious handicap. That is what makes this interesting.
AccountKiller
The GP makes a post, saying "Fuck Python C# for life!", and you make a post essentially saying "Fuck C#, real languages for life!".
It's a real battle of wits, isn't it?
How dare someone prefer one programming language to another!
Did you RTFA (or more specifically LATFC)? This coin has algorithmic outputs both on the front (the Queen made out of architect names) and on the back (an outline of Holland made out of books). I can't see how anybody could create it using Photoshop or Illustrator. The coin designer probably spent more time coding than sketching (like the book Snow Crash).
Also, it's beautiful. I want one, no, a few million of them.
Yeah, it's just the kind of petty small-mindedness that I would expect from an emacs user.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The more talent you have, the less important the tools are.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I hear you.
Fuck emacs, vi for life!
Asked what he was going to do with the award money, the artist said "I'll finally be able to afford Photoshop!" ;)
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
So, basically, shovels are better than back hoes because with a shovel you can make both small and big holes, but with back-hoes, you can only make big holes. However, what you aren't taking into account is that while backhoes can't make small holes, they are way more efficient at making big ones.
And just for the record, a "small hole" is a low-level project, such as an operating system, and a "big hole" is a higher-level system, like a software program.
I'm not saying that C# is better than C, just that they have different purposes and are therefore better at different things.
it's also an extended version of "ed" that is a very useful tool.
Yesterday my Fedora 9 updater told me that I had a security update.
For ed.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?