It is not “Open Source” to provide the binary for free (that is called freeware)

It is not “Open Source” to provide the binary and then say that people can reverse engineer it (that’s weird so we don’t have a name for it)

“Open Source” means that you provide the source files (in film terms the “rushes”) really to make a music video “open source” would require you to provide all the rushes (well at least the rushes that made the cut) as well as the project files from your compositing / editing application - most editing apps have the ability to export the project file with trimmed media source files so there is no huge technical reason to prevent people from producing an opensource music video (or feature film or whatever).

However I suspect that the majority of efforts in this area are designed to generate publicity rather than actually provide creative opportunities to remix and reuse components of the film. The adoption of the perl foundation license is a case in point - this is not an appropriate license for a film work to be released under. It has too many references to software terminology and it is not clear how a court would interpret the license when applied to non-software items.

The Creative Commons Licenses were specifically setup to enable the sharing and licensing for remix / reuse of creative works (such as film, music etc) If R.E.M really wanted to encourage remixes and reuse of their muisc video then they should of chosen the appropriate Creative Commons license.

So I say boo to R.E.M for trying to cash in on publicity by claiming to be open source when they clearly have made little or no effort to workout what open source actually means.

Openness in content, like software, is a matter of degrees. I am a proponent of open-source software, who works primarily on the Windows platform - I’m sure you can all taste the irony there. Given a choice, I simply try to show preference for things that are more open than not, without being so dogmatic as to paralyze my creativity.

So yeah, this REM project isn’t revolutionary, but it’s newsworthy, and another shot across the bow by an artist who is in theory supposed to represent the “commercial” side of the equation. IMO it deserves to be praised, not bashed, by those who hope to see bigger steps toward openness in the future.

My favorite free Windows tools for generating content / performing live:
Whorld - http://whorld.org
FFrend - http://ffrend.sourceforge.net/
OpenTZT - http://www.opentzt.com/
VisualJockey - http://www.visualjockey.com/

btw, VisualJockey was just recently released as freeware (after being payware for a very long time) - which is pretty big news in its own right.

So the “fully-assed” efforts of a *lot* of well-meaning individuals will make this realistic.

That tells you the real secret, though, which is people out shooting content. When video gets to the point that photos are at now … and this may take a very long time indeed … then we’ll see something quite different. And I can imagine it even happening in smaller volumes with filmmakers, etc. Releasing under a non-commercial CC license could allow people to remix your documentary film, without threatening your income stream. Even the musicians are ahead on this. Video seems to be last, but it’s also the hardest content to produce and deal with, so that makes sense.