What exactly is it that I'm proposing will make up the software side of this project? Simple. A complete suite of utilities which, when used together, will act as a complete virtual film studio. Yes, this is ambitious, but it's almost irrelevant as to how close to the goal this project ever goes. Every utility that is written is one more utility people can use and one fewer that people need to rely on closed, proprietary packages for. Taking this one step at a time, there is no reason at all why this should not achieve the same level of success as the FSF has had in developing a full, free Operating System.
A number of non-free, zero-cost programs exist, which perform many of the functions listed. However, the lack of freedom means that they cannot be adapted to work with any of the packages above, or any of the other GNU software. I cannot, in good concience, recommend using them, as a part of this project, for that reason alone. Unless the programs are freed, there's simply no way to ensure that they'd work with the other software.
Even in those cases where there is compatiability, it is very strongly recommended that people use "free" alternatives, if at all possible. If no free alternative exists, and you are interested in writing one, please feel free to do so.
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Updated: $Date: 2006/11/22 08:03:23 $ $Author: ramprasadb $