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Timelapse photos of our move to Sterling
Jennifer and I thought it would be cool to take some timelapse videos of our move to Sterling. We ran two cameras during the loading and cleaning process and one camera on the dashboard of the moving truck the next day. A few people have asked me how these are done, so basic instructions are listed at the end of this post.
The recordings are done in Motion, a freedom software video program for Linux. The configuration file looks like this:
- ffmpeg_timelapse 10
That’s pretty much it. You invoke it from a terminal with motion -n -c configfile.conf. There are tons of options to tweak, including brightness, contrast, etc., so it’s worth exploring the manual.
Eight Steps to the Radically Transparent Church
Radical Transparency is all the rage right now. With President Obama opening access to government data in order to encourage transparency, more attention is being paid to the way that restricting information restricts collaboration, decision making, and progress. This is, however, a value derived strongly from the Internet – more specifically, from the Freedom Software movement.
Pay per use MS Office on the way?
A new Microsoft patent application was noticed by someone on Slashdot today. They want to offer Microsoft Office services on a pay-as-you-go basis. I took the liberty of fixing it so that everyone can see what this could eventually mean for the church.
If you go with a system like this, you are dependent on the future availability of a particular online service offered by a particular company (not to mention your ability to pay!) for the continued availability of your data. On the other hand, if you use open-standards based freedom software like OpenOffice.org, you’ll always have free access to your work because no corporation can hold your data hostage. Just another reason to pick open standards and freedom software as often as you can for church work.
Freedom Software vs. Freedomware?
I have proposed using the term “Freedom Software” instead of “Free Software” to describe software which gives its users the same freedom to redistribute or modify the code as the original developer. Of course, not everyone is convinced that that is the least confusing term. In this comment on an article about the Cisco open source lawsuit, “motie38″ suggests the term “Freedomware.” Is that better or worse than “Freedom Software?”
Closed File Formats and Christian Ethics
Professor Vern Sheridan Poythress, a Presbyterian seminary professor, has a great website where he has made a huge portion of his lifetime writings available completely free. On his site, he has published an article discussing the ethical implications of closed file formats.
Poythress roots his discussion primarily in justice for people in the Third World who cannot obtain copies of proprietary software to open files saved in proprietary formats. This is an important point for the church, where communication with people in other countries has been strongly facilitated by the Internet, but I would like to extend his argument somewhat. When one is in the position to choose between software which interoperates with free and open formats and software which does not, one is, in part, making a choice to obligate the future users of one’s work to use particular software.
It’s important to note at this point that none of this discussion necessarily points to using freedom software. If Microsoft, for example, produces a version of Word that fully interoperates with the OpenDocument format, the ethical question of file formats goes away. You might choose to use costly proprietary software to create your document, but the recipient is not obligated do to likewise because the file format is open and anyone can write a program to work with it. Hence, the ethical question of file formats is not even whether the file format is open or closed. Instead, the question is whether or not there exists freely available software for reading and fully manipulating that document down the road. As long as that software exists and is readily available, you can choose whatever software you like.
There are plenty of good reasons to choose freedom software over proprietary software in many instances. Freedom software almost always uses open file formats, so interoperability is guaranteed.
Ultimately, the ethics of file formats is about control. It is irresponsible of the church to give control over access to data or choice of software away unnecessarily.
The Coming Death or Rebirth of Church Publishing
Every church I’ve ever attended has had to spend time, energy, and money contending with copyright infringement. Every duplicated hymn in the bulletin, every extra copy of music for the musicians, etc. is potentially a source of copyright violations. Many churches work hard to prevent this kind of problem with organizations like CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International) and with licensing agreements through church publishing houses, but I’ve yet to find a church which fully complies with copyright law.
On one hand, paying for worship resources guarantees that the church can continue to develop high quality products in the future. On the other hand, licensing can be expensive, especially for small churches. Also, copyright enforcement actions effectively pit Christian against Christian and bring new meaning to “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Sliding-scale payment schemes go a long way towards making resources accessible to small churches, but they are imperfect at best. What can be done?
Don Parris at Blue-Gnu recently began developing a hymnal for his small church which will feature music which is free as in free speech or the “freedom” in “freedom software.” Most of the hymns will be derived from The Cyber Hymnal, which is a huge collection of public domain hymns.
In some senses this begins to help solve the problem of free access to worship resources for smaller congregations, though by not including musical scores and liturgy resources this kind of hymnal would not offer enough for a typical Lutheran church. With the growing popularity of electronic distribution and video projection in church sanctuaries, physical copies of worship resources are becoming less important. Few would dispute, I think, that church publishing houses (and big name publishers in general) are becoming less significant as the Internet grows. If electronic distribution of worship resources becomes the norm, the Freedom mindset of the Internet will have done to church publishers what it has already done to newspapers: crippled their power and forced them to adapt to a situation where widespread usage without compensation is the norm.
Electronic distribution, technology in worship, and other forces are already redefining church publishers’ landscape in the same way that blogging did for newspapers. Just as newspapers ignored, then ridiculed, and then desperately embraced blogging as the Internet culture redefined news distribution, publishers are also beginning to face the same kind of changes with projects like Parris’ freedom hymnal. I hope they will learn from the mistakes and delays of the newspapers and embrace free (and freedom) distribution before they are smashed by new technology.
The Christian Ethos of Freedom Software
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” – Matthew 18.20
The essence of the Christian life is community. This promise of Christ places God’s presence in the other, so that while God is present within each one of us, God’s presence is most available to us in our relationships with other Christians. If we take that seriously, there is a great deal to be learned about how we are to interact with our neighbor. If people have needs, they should be taken care of as bearers of God’s image. The fundamental orientation of the Christian life, lived in relationship, is upward to God and outward to people.
Starting Point for Freedom Software in the Church
As I write more about Freedom Software in the Church, I have just begun to collect my articles in a central location where they are easier to find. Find out more about Freedom Software and the importance of using it in the church.
“Freedom Software” versus “Free Software”
“‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; …O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” – Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Perhaps the most frustrating thing for me as an advocate for the use of Free(dom) software in the church is explaining the term “Free Software.” What does that mean? Most people, hearing that name, think “freeware” – any software that is free to use without serious limitations. But, of course, that’s only half of the meaning behind the term.
Copyright 2006-2010 Ted Carnahan. Except where noted, the content of this site is licensed under CC-SA-BY.