PERSPECTIVES ON COLLABORATIVE MUSIC Hi, how's it going? In this video, we'll discuss two websites where you can upload different types of files. The first site is the Internet Archive digital library, and the second is the GitHub open source development platform. Let's begin. Let's start with the Internet Archive. This website has been running since 1996, and is understood as a non-profit library where you can find open access files, which can be found in its interface with icons for categories like website, text, video, audio, TV, software, images, concerts, and collections. Although the Internet Archive supports various files, its main objective is to back up books, and supply them to anyone who needs them. In this way, it gives access to books that are old, discontinued, or modern and open access. The site works like an open library where books are lent for an amount of time. In order to borrow these files, as well as to upload your own, you have to make an account. It's worth noting that Internet Archive lets us save different types of files with the goal of creating a cultural repository, so its objective isn't just to save files, but to preserve and grant access to them. The place where the files are saved is called the "Library", where you can also write posts and reviews, make collections and web archives, and manage loaned books. For our course, this digital library can be used to store your audio creations, to share them with other people, and to expand the archive that makes up this platform. Next, we have Github, a public code repository based on the Git version control system, which was developed by Linus Torvalds to follow up on the changes that different developers made to the Linux kernel's source code. Git is designed so that every developer that works on a development project can have a copy of the master document, which they can modify and then incorporate in the project's central repository. There are many online interfaces to use Git, like the GitHub public repository, which as its website states is an open source development platform where you can upload and download a project's source code to develop software alongside other developers, in order to maintain a common version. The platform is organized by repositories, each containing the source code and documentation of each project. The code can be downloaded, modified, and reuploaded through requests called "push" and "pull". To gain access to GitHub, you have to create an account where you can start creating repositories and working individually or in a team. Let's quickly see how the platform works. To create a project, we'll log into our GitHub account, click on the "Start a project" option, and write a name in the "Repository name" box. Then, we add a description, choose if the repository should be public or private, and choose to start the project with a "README" document. Additionally, we can choose from different license types, and, optionally, specify the project's programming language. Lastly, we click on "Create repository". To add a document with code, we'll click "Create new file", give it a name, and paste the code that we want to work with. For example, I'm going to paste the SuperCollider source code that we'll be using in the next video to send and receive data from Pure Data. After pasting the code, we'll go to the lower part where we can write information about the new document, and lastly click "Commit new file". Another way to add a document to the repository is using the "Upload files" button. If we want to make changes to our files, we can open them, click on the pencil icon, modify the file, write information about the changes we made, and click the "Commit changes" button. Now let's go over the concept of branches. A branch is a copy of the master repository or the original repository, also called the "master", that the developers that work on a project can copy to edit, compare changes, discuss, approve, and lastly incorporate into the master repository. After creating a repository, we can create a branch, which involves making a version of the master repository where we can make changes to then upload to the master branch with a commit action. Commit is the action by which you save the changes that you make to a branch. Every change that you save or commit creates a message to describe it. This way, we generate a change history. After making any changes, you can do a "pull" request". In doing this, you put your edits forward and request a revision. This also shows the series of differences between the original and the edited code. Once you're happy with the changes, they can be incorporated with the "Merge" button. Having access to a platform like GitHub will let you back up source code online, edit it, allow other people to download and use the code, work in a software development team, contribute to other projects you like, and have access to code that can help you to expand and improve your projects. Besides these two platforms, there are many alternatives that allow us to upload audio and source code files, that work under the idea of sharing and exchanging in different ways. In this video, we saw two examples of websites that can be used to upload files of different types. The first one accepts various filetypes, and the second one accepts different software development versions for collaborative work. I hope that you find this information useful. See you next time.
