What My Belt and My Operation System Have In Common
They can never be declared “finished.”
This one time, I was hanging out in #freeculture. I was thinking about installing the latest version of Songbird. I had installed an early version awhile ago, and I remembered it being buggy and lacking key features. So I asked the people of #freeculture, “is Songbird finished?” Someone (I don’t remember who) responded, “software can be finished?”
This is a really cool idea, and it’s one that Free Software embraces. It’s somewhat obvious that software could always be better–more useful features could be added, bugs could be fixed, and compatibility with more pieces of hardware and software could be added. With proprietary software, the people distributing it have the power to declare that it is finished. They can simply refuse to continue to develop it, and because they are the only ones who can legally do so, development stops and evolution of the software ends. With Free Software, even if a group of developers dissolves or a company becomes bankrupt, the public has the freedom to continue to develop and re-distribute the software. Free Software cannot be killed, and it cannot be definitively declared finished.
I made my belt out of duct tape. As with anything else made out of duct tape, it eventually starts to stretch or peel. When that happens, I add more duct tape. At one point, I added strips of white on top of the black for a cool zebra effect. When the space between notches rips and the holes get too big, I just add a couple new layers of duct tape and then cut new notches. If my belt were made out of leather, I wouldn’t be able to easily add or subtract parts without “ruining” it.
My duct tape artwork is significantly different from my ceramic sculpture in this way. When I make a sculpture out of clay, I let it dry, fire it, glaze it, and fire it again, and then it’s done. It has been declared finished, and its form is fixed. I can’t decide later that I want to add parts or take parts away. If the handle breaks off a teapot, any repair work will stand out against the rest of the piece, which is “finished.”
With my duct tape belt (and my other duct tape artwork), the material medium is culturally understood as a tool for repairs, especially quick fixes. Thus, the idea of a construction made entirely of said material is weirdly recursive and cool. Similarly, many members of the Free Software community use the term “hacking” to refer generally to “coding” and sometimes any sort of “working” or “doing.” A common understanding of the noun form, “hack,” is something like “a quick and dirty fix.” A “hack” is the duct tape of coding.
I have the power to adapt and fix and remix my belt–in fact, by the very nature of its construction, it encourages me to do so. The same goes for my operating system, GNU/Linux. This is empowering.
