On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Oron Peled wrote:
> 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 replicatethe 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 managmentof 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...
>
Very interesting, Oron. I seriously doubt that it benefited society as
well. Whatever money universities earned from selling their projects,
probably would have been less big than distributing them as free software
would have benefited the world at large, and bring reputation to the
university. It is even possible that they indirectly would have benefited
more. (by organizations and individuals contributing to them to continue
the development of the software).
Many times releasing the software as commercial, non-free one, is not
worth the overhead of developing it. I think most shrinkwrap start-ups
don't even get off the ground. And ESR illustrates why a sale-value niche
is bound to be eventually occupied by only one competitor in "The Magic
Cauldron". Releasing the software as open-source actually makes more sense
economically most of the time.
As much as I think greed (for money and many other things) is good, I also
think that you need to understand the economical groundsup. Money is not
the most important thing that needs to be acquired. Happiness, well-being
and prosperity are. If a money is a means to achieve it so be it. But if
an out-of-context desire for money actually deprives you of them (and
money) in the long run, then it should be avoided.
Note that the Stanford checker was not released to the outside, yet, and
is a software for internal use, something that does not invalidate the
free software ideology. I do hope it becomes available, but don't know the
issues involved. When the Technion decided to teach the book "Computation
Structures" from MIT Press, in the course "Logic Design" it received or
licensed a few simulators from MIT. Now those simulators were for DOS, and
came in binary only. And they actually suck quite a bit.
At least students and faculty of universities can work on open-source
projects (sometimes at the university's facilities) without the university
being able to make a claim for it. But who is John Galt?
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron
>
> "Linux: like the air you breathe, ubiquitous and free"
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
There's no point in keeping an idea to yourself since there's a 10 to 1
chance that somebody already has it and will share it before you.
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