On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 00:19:56 +0200
"Nadav Har'El" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The tradition in Universities has always been to publish their results,
> *and* give enough information in that publication for the readers to be
> able to replicate the work, and build on it.
Right on target. I vaguely remember an article discussing the change
that happened to the academic system (in the US) over the last 20 years.
[I cannot find right now the URL, but I'll try to summarize its essense]
It is easy to notice that all big university projects that were
released with liberal licenses (X11/MIT, IP/Berkley, Kerberos/MIT, etc.)
were developed during the ~80's.
The change occured when (approx 1981-2) a bill was passed at the congress
that allowed universities to "sell" their inventions. The goal of the
bill was good -- to inject funds into the poor (at the time) academic
system, but as they say "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".
What happend is that gradually, the managment of universities has started
to see the economic potential of capitalizing on research results. It took
time to shift priorities, since the academic managment of universities
at the US does not get direct orders from the administrative management
(similar to Israel before the changes suggested lately....).
However, by the beggining of the nineties almost all universities had
special offices to mangage their "Intelectual Property" (what a word!),
All research results "belonged" to the university and researchers
were required to get approval for release of their work.
By the end of this decade (199x) the situation has got so bad that
(a quote I remember):
"To release your work with liberal license, you need to
convince the office that it is WORTHLESS"
Now, has this law really benefited the science and industry?
I have my doubts...
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