Eh...maybe (Score 2, Insightful)

Maybe...but then again, one could argue that Shakespeare synthesized new plays from material that was available then; from what I've seen from at least some of the sources for some of his plays, there are enough differences between what Shakespeare wrote as a play, and what the sources Shakespeare probably used actually said, that Shakespeare's stuff comes across as mostly original and unique.

Music has a similar problem: yes, musicians can borrow either theme or sample from an existing work (or body of works), but generally their new syntheses of those themes and samples turn out to be different and unique from the original source(s).

I do think it's a difference in mentality between artists and OSS, but I think it's less to do with artists not having their own 'open soucre community' and more to do with them not realizing the benefits of doing things for free. :-)

Advertising, being one of the biggies: I'm sure there are more than a few 'starving' artists who would not be 'starving' if people saw their work...but, if the galleries in the artists' city don't display their work for whatever reason, what are the artists to do?

Alternatively, if those same 'starving' artists did some original artwork for a OSS game or two, their work would be more visible quicker than if they waited for some gallery to display their work. True, the artists might not hit the right audience, but they would be more likely to hit any audience...

(Besides, the artists-in-question might find they like drawing dragons and gun-toting demons more than they like drawing portraits and bowls of fruit. :-) )

Same goes for music. Yes, you aren't going to be monetarily compensated for the work created for OSS (at least, not typically); on the other hand, you get increased visibility and potentially new legions of fans and word of mouth...:-) Fair trade, I think.

And advertising's just one example; there are a lot of things you could do within a trade/barter system. Money is not the only way to pay for things; maybe an OSS game programmer/designer could offer the artist computings services (website design, e-mail account, server space, etc.) in exchange for some original artwork for the programmer's game. That stuff is useful, and doesn't come cheap. Again, I would think that's a fair trade...

OSS needs to do a better job of playing up the values of 'free as in beer'. :-)

My $0.02...

tigermonkey