I was on my flight back from Portland, Oregon, where I spend a week at UbuntuLive and OSCON 2007. With all that energy on my mind, I put on my headphones and gazed at the western sky. The sun had just set and the sky looked an eerie Ubuntu-orange.  I was listening to Karsh Kale's Realize, a mix of tabla (Indian classical drums) and electronica. While I appreciate the science of pure classical music, I often prefer mixes, where artists attempt to take pieces from here and there and come up with their own interpretation of what art should be.
As I listened to Empty Hands I could feel the nuances of beats and electronica as they provided support to the lyrics (I understand Hindi/Urdu, so your mileage may vary) weaving a fabric that is energetic, and yet adheres to standards of classical music.

The next thing that came to my mind was "Why do I enjoy mixed music?" Very quickly, I realized that I enjoyed mixed music for the same reason that I enjoy mixed code. Talent taken from multiple sources and mixed in ways that the original authors never intended. I am sure Linus never intended for his "pet project" to be running on mobile phones. Code is after all an expression of the author, her talent, her intent at making a binary machine do things. Then we see a progression where that code is weaved in with other objects (code or hardware) and new works are born.

So, when Karsh Kale or dj cheb-i-sabbah  start beating their drums and spinning their disks, they are really no different than a Matthew Garrett or a Oliver Grawert checks in code into a repository.