IDEA 20090331 Creating in the Cloud and Other Tales of Design Realidad

Creating in the Cloud and Other Tales of Design Realidad

The trend towards web-based applications creates a question about the future of creativity on the web. With web projects like Aviary, Scribd and Slideshare, more people than ever have access to making and sharing creations. How do our beloved desktop applications such as Inkscape, Gimp, Scribus, Krita, and Blender fit into this new world wide web world order (NWWWWO)? How do our projects stay relevant in contemporary times as more users and technology move to use network services? How may we learn from the rapid development of web-based projects that don't rely upon the ultra-long development cycles, arduous community learning curves and reliance upon cranky ingrained software development methodologies?

First, this presentation surveys the landscape of creative network services such as Aviary, DeviantArt, Scribd, and Docstoc. Then it investigates the the Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) approach to on-line network services, Autonomo.us Free Network Services most commonly licensed with the GNU Affero GPL 3.0 software license. The Open Clip Art Library and Open Font Library communities are used as examples of pre-Free Network Services websites which can fit into the Autonomo.us Free Network Services definition.

This presentation is a call to arms for all FLOSS Graphics communities to think about how their applications integrate with the web, what pieces are missing, and how we can all collaborate on making a unlocked web-based graphics future.

Possible ideas
Publish graphic artwork projects into current CVS One could check out an image of a project directly from Inkscape/Karbon14 and check it in, when work is done. This would be quite similar to ODF SVN (ooosvn, http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/OOoSVN ). This would make it simple to edit large collections of vector graphics focused on a single topic, for example this could work for Oxygen, the KDE theme project. One big drawback is that currently there is no visual diff tool, that can isolate the type of changes made to an XML file (highlight inserts, deletions and modifications with different colours).

Online galleries A photo organizer should integrate with online photo sharing services such as flickr, picasa and image hosting providers. Why should there be any difference between local photo galleries and online ones? Thumbnails can be downloaded in background for every photo and full size images can be downloaded on demand. For example, one should be able to subscribe to someone else's photostream: this is the way Miro works (http://getmiro.org)

Webdav Storage Provide a simple transparent network share for all creative applications.

Open Photo Currently there isn't an Open Clip Art Library for photos.

Open Video Currently there isn't an Open Video Library

Open Documents Currently there isn't an free network service document sharing service