Apache logo, courtesy of The Apache Software Foundation

For an unrelated project, I’m writing a section about open source licenses and I happened across language in the Apache license that gives users the right to “publicly display [and] publicly perform” the work. Immediately after reading those words, I sat there for a good five minutes thinking up creative ways to turn the source code of the most popular open-source web server in the world into a performance piece. Unfortunately none my ideas for a song and dance rendition of the Apache source code were very good (in fact, the very concept is wretched. It’d be intolerable to sit though). Though a copyleft, source-code based, visual art installation could be pretty cool… with pages of code pasted to the walls, floor and ceiling. Errant CRTs jutting from the mass of lacquered paper, scanning over the codebase in amber on black. The guts of the enabler of the modern web on display in all their hideous monotony.