OK, OK, bad headline. But what better for the coming long, hot summer than ice cream? And why use a silly ol’ recipe book when you could be adding to the code base of Open Source Ice Cream? Why indeed? ...public Icecream() { milk = new Milk.getPints(FULL_FAT, 2); butter = new Butter.getOunce(Ounce.random(2, 4)); vanilla = new Vanilla().split(RANDOM); emulsifier = new Emulsifier(); custard = new Custard();...What madness is this, we hear you cry? Summer madness, my friends, that's what. The Icecream For Everyone project has gone open source. And that means free chilled Java.Classes all round! 'They said it couldn't be done, but we've revived the lost recipe of the Greco Brothers', explain the folk behind the I4E project, Simon Pope and Mark Greco. They're making the classic recipe available as GPL-protected open source code for icey hackers everywhere to modify and distribute… according to taste, of course. 'Through careful study and months of reverse-engineering, we've managed to piece together a taste from the recent past: from popular memory, the peoples' ice cream; from before the days of dairy-glut and self-absorbed, luxury frozen fondant; the meeting of Italian and British popular-cultures. Made with whole ingredients and no preservatives or stabilizers, this ice cream defies the restrictive practices of corporate food empires, releasing ice cream's potential to speak from many and varied cultural contexts.'Despite all the hyperbole, ths project's as much about the Free Software Movement and the Open Source project, of course, as it is about frozen confectionary. Critics have argued that the project of getting back to the base matter of ice cream is linked into social histories and concerned with finding ways that the cultures of food and of technology can learn from each other. Well, uh, maybe. What we're getting from it all is that the business of making shitty ice cream out of obscure ingredients in a fucked-up way is not unlike the business of making shitty software out of obscure, messy components, also in a fucked up way. See? It's simple, really. And so much nicer if people work together to make nice ice cream, out of good ingredients in an open and honest way. So Pope and Greco have been doing the rounds with their ice cream maker and have already appeared at a number of events in London and Cardiff (the stuff's pretty popular in South Wales - believe us, we know) to dish out hundreds of coppettas of cow-milk, cornflour, vanilla and sugar. Are they really interested in ice cream at all? Do they really mean it? You know, we think they are, in a funny kind of way. And we think they do. It's the spirit of free software - only applied to creamy sweet stuff. And we're down with it. Mo' Ice: bak.spc.org/ice
Check the latest supercool release: bak.spc.org/ice/open_source.html
Or mail the guys your new recipes at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)/*<![CDATA[*/var l=new Array();var output = '';l[0]='>';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 103';l[5]=' 114';l[6]=' 111';l[7]=' 46';l[8]=' 99';l[9]=' 112';l[10]=' 115';l[11]=' 46';l[12]=' 101';l[13]=' 99';l[14]=' 105';l[15]=' 64';l[16]=' 101';l[17]=' 99';l[18]=' 105';l[19]='>';l[20]='\"';l[21]=' 103';l[22]=' 114';l[23]=' 111';l[24]=' 46';l[25]=' 99';l[26]=' 112';l[27]=' 115';l[28]=' 46';l[29]=' 101';l[30]=' 99';l[31]=' 105';l[32]=' 64';l[33]=' 101';l[34]=' 99';l[35]=' 105';l[36]=':';l[37]='o';l[38]='t';l[39]='l';l[40]='i';l[41]='a';l[42]='m';l[43]='\"';l[44]='=';l[45]='f';l[46]='e';l[47]='r';l[48]='h';l[49]='a ';l[50]='<';for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') output += "&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"; else output += unescape(l[i]);}document.getElementById('eeEncEmail_lUqCzWlDTf').innerHTML = output;/*]]>*/
. Come on. They’re tryin’ hard here.
