Allison ParrishApr 11, 2017

I was doing a workshop last weekend and while I was showing my work I discovered that two of the pieces in my portfolio are just... dead links. both pieces were made on commission for organizations that no longer exist, and I was reminded of the fact that if you want something on the internet to last you have to host it yourself.

(this is why I'm a mastodon fan. not that I'm hosting my own account right now, but it's good to know that I could!)

Show threadAllison ParrishApr 11, 2017
I teach tech and I'm often asked why I don't teach some allegedly time-saving proprietary tool/environment/whatever. the answer is that the risk of that proprietary tool just ceasing to exist are really high, and when that happens, the time I spend developing curricula against the tool goes up in smoke. by contrast, notes I wrote for, e.g., python text processing are just as good today as they were ten years ago. over the long run, I think I save a lot of time by teaching only open source tools.
Show threadJeff Epler🦉
@aparrish i agree but i don't want to be too self congratulatory about how we never lose the ability to run 20 year old software. I have plenty of 15 year old python programs that don't run due to minor compatibility problems. It's likely that in 10 years hardly anybody will run this weird old X11 thing and a million applications will not be easy to run anymore etc. Being Free software didn't help a "mere user" run treasured software after the community moves on and it breaks.
Apr 12, 2017 at 12:28amWeb
Show threadAllison ParrishApr 12, 2017
@jepler oh I absolutely agree—open source software and architecture is also subject to bitrot. but the projects in question were both less than two years old (!). it's always going to be a shitshow for "mere users" but I think especially in the high-churn world of contemporary tech culture, it's important for artists and makers to control the platforms that host their work.