2006-12-18 Free Software And Electronic Music

Free Software and Electronic Music : something in common ? maybe...

I remembered a discussion I had some years ago about the similarities between the free software movement and the electronic music movement. I was feeling quite alone at that time as I was the only one thinking that the sharing principle behind the electronic music and free software creation is quite the same (e.g. sharing samples, audio works ). I kept back the idea in my mind but without thinking about it too much…

While walking in a bookshop, I discovered the following book : Digital Magma : De l'utopie des rave parties à la génération iPod made by Jean-Yves Leloup (sorry in French). It's a very nice and concise book about electronic music and its evolution in the society. My main surprise is the book is clearly explaining the parallelism between the two : the free software world and the electronic music world. There are some good references to other classical books about electronic music or free software (e.g. : like the famous book from Pekka Himanen). A nice, easy and pleasant reading if you are interested by the subject. I'll try to find back the people in the past discussion and send them the reference of this book ;-)