In fact, much academic research these days is actually funded (partly or completely) by industry. The question then becomes--do the results of the research belong to the researchers or to the corporation that funded the research?
Martin Polley Technical Communicator http://www.surf-com.com/ Tel: (+972) (4) 9095-732 Mobile: (053) 864-280 -----Original Message----- From: Oron Peled [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 12:30 PM To: Uri Bruck Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: where has free software gone? (was Re: knesset meeting on open source) On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 05:40:29 +0300 (EET DST) Uri Bruck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Salk developed the vaccine for polio while working for a university. > He > worked for a salary. The project was a joint project of several > universities, and obviously had funding. As for giving away the vaccine, Which just shows there are alternative models to fund scientific discovery. The basic division used to be: * Academy: does basic research, is funded by public (taxes) and the results are published and available to the public. * Industry: Implements what looks promising and fund development by reaping the results of implementation. The problem now is that every day the situation is more like: * Academy: still funded by public (taxes) and grants, but the results are sold to the Industry to get more money. * Industry: hold monopoly "rights" both to the implementation and to the ideas. This new model has several flaws: 1. The public pays double price. Both to keep the academic system in place and than to buy the fruits of its research. 2. More importantly, as academic institutions are striving to make more money by selling their discoveries, they behave more like R&D departments of the industry. This is bad because the industry has (and should have) short term goals (to bring money in, to satisfy investors). If these criteria infiltrate the academic system (which is already happening) who will search in those long-term-and-not-so-promising directions? ---------------------------------------------------------------- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron Linux: If you're not careful, you might actually learn something. -- Allen Wong ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
