What I appreciate most about the Open Source process, is how organically it can evolve to address these issues. Think, software by artists for artists.

One of the first things I asked Zach was about the cross-platform portability of OpenFrameworks, in particular the GUI elements – but his reply was that OF does not have any of that included so it is not an issue. It makes sense really, while Interface Builder has a huge variation of ‘Aqua/brushed metal’ UI elements, perhaps the majority of artworks/installations just don’t require them.

So maybe there will be a new era, but my guess is that we can’t rely on the likes of Apple/Adobe. As Zach stated, it is more about publishing our ‘research’ and building on the work of others.

Now, what if you could wish away the memory management issues and open up the power of frameworks such as open-gl and quartz-2d (just to name two). Well, Leopard is coming and Objective C 2 has garbage collection… http://developer.apple.com/leopard/overview/

I’ve been experiementing and although I can’t say much because of NDAs etc, there are exciting times coming… I think we’re going to see a new era come to fruition, with designers and artists able to develop high-performance interactive applications that historically have only been within reach of dedicated computer science people… Can’t wait…

http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/openframeworks

I hope to get back into it soon.