Collaborative Remote Desktop Service using Open-source Software
Collaborative Remote Desktop Service (CRDS)
On March 6, 2022, I released a prototype of the Collaborative Remote Desktop Service (CRDS) on the Micro-VPC to teach digital art. The CRDS has real-time collaboration features to allow multiple participants from distanced sites to share multimedia, including 2D drawing & painting, 3D solid modeling, photograph, and videos. Similar services use proprietary software. But, if these applications shown in the following figure were built using proprietary software, the licensing fees for Adobe, Autodesk, and Microsoft would be enormous. I would like to use cloud computing and open-source software to support the activities of NPOs and individuals in the arts, sciences, and education, which giant software corporations never achieve.
Figure 1: Apps in the Collaborative RDS.
Figure 2: Structure of Collaborative RDS and process of privilege separation and restriction.
CRDS is designed for collaborative activities[1], management of the students[2], security protection[3], and personal information protection[4].
[1] Collaborative Activities
Users can share a single account on GNOME desktop on Linux from remote locations to allow collaborative use of applications on the desktop. The applications are Gimp (Photo Retouch), Darktable (RAW Image Developer), Inkscape (Illustrating), Kdenlive (Video Editing), Krita (Drawing & Painting), Blender (3-D CG), and FreeCAD (3-D CAD).
[2] Management of the Students
The instructor can allow students to enter the room, monitor them with a participants list, and in some cases, force them out.
[3] Security Protection
In the CRDS, a firewall blocks external attacks, and Guacamole authenticates users' accounts. The services in the CRDS are the latest version with no vulnerabilities.
[4] Personal Information Protection
To prevent personal information leakage, CRDS revokes users' privileges, e.g., uploading, downloading files, and user switching.
Digital Arts Education and Open-source Software
Some technical schools in Japan teach digital art for a hefty tuition fee of over JPY 1,000,000 (USD 8,659) per year. The tuition fee includes expensive subscriptions for 3D CG, in the case of Autodesk 3ds Max, basically, JPY 254,880 (USD 2,328) per user per year. Digital art production requires several types of software, and maintaining these subscriptions is a financial burden, even for corporations. However, corporations also profit from these fees, so it is not easy to adopt open-source software because of the inexpensive costs. Besides, the schools believe that students who can use the branded software are more likely to be hired by corporations. However, this makes it look like they are making expensive software operators instead of training artistic talent. Also, the state of affairs is a buyer's market where corporations can choose the students they hire. Besides, students can't afford to buy the applications, such as 3ds Max, Photoshop, and Illustrator, because they're costly. Even if they learn how to use them, they'll only use them in dedicated studios of corporations. Instead, we only want to enjoy art and creative activities. Also, it would be nice to find a job in the arts, but even if not, those who enjoy the arts and technologies will be happier than the operators. Therefore, I believe it is possible to develop their creative minds for artistic works using open-source software globally before the software operations.