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.... topic and why it's a bad idea here:

http://www.caut.ca/en/bulletin/issues/2004_nov/com m_copyrightreform.asp

Highly recommended reading for Canadians who wish to see why the House Of Commons should bury this idea today.

For those of you who don't know who Michael Geist is, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Geist for more info.

I assume that's because it's not incorporated as a for-profit entity. I guess that's what my question boils down to: is one of the determining factors for "intended for ... commercial advantage" whether an entity is incorporated for profit? For example, there are "universities" like DeVry in the U.S., which is "one of the three major players in the private, for-profit post secondary education sector in the North America" (from here). So would DeVry be unable to use non-commercial Creative Commons material, whereas other universities would? And is this something that's clearly determined by precedent?

Are you sure you want ads subsidising the publication of scientific research, especially in medicine?

This paper entitled, "Viagra causes withered genitals," is brought to you by the makers of Cialis.

Better yet, there were two separate instances at the University of Toronto where two separate researchers were pressured into suppressing their research when it was unfavorable to one of the university's sponsors. The investigator in one case was Dr. Nancy Olivieri, who faced a possible lawsuit and discipline when she spoke out against Apotex; the other one involved Dr. David Healey, who had a job offer rescinded when he spoke against Prozac.

So what's left? Author-pay, government-pay and donation-based systems all have disadvantages.

For health-related info we need a law making it a criminal act to knowingly suppress information about a potential significant hazard to human health.

Which apparently you don't.

the versions of OpenBSD with SMP support will require a Windows XP activation key...

Or maybe they figured out a way to port OpenBSd to Windows. Or something. Waterloo?

I assume you're referring to the stories from several months ago about a proposed deal where UW's Computer and Electrical Engineering department would, as part of a larger research sponsorship deal with MS, agree to make C# the language used in a first year class for CompEng students. There was a huge outcry against this by most CS and CompEng students and profs. Also, note that the School of Computer Science, in the Faculty of Mathematics, had nothing to do with this deal.

It is my impression that there are many UW students who use or contribute to Open Source projects. Profs are more than willing to make an occasional joke in class at Microsoft's expense. And most CS students (I can't speak for CompEngers) don't touch any MS products for programming projects past first year, by far preferring to use the provided unix labs.

Do I think the CompEng department's decision regarding C# bad? Very much so. But as I understand it, this decision was made by a few key people who stretched their authority, when really they should have consulted with more people. In fact, Engineering profs have called UW administration on this decision, leading to a decision that before the MS deal can be finalized, it must be approved by "the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Program Committee, Faculty of Engineering Admissions Committee, Faculty of Engineering Academic Committee, Faculty of Engineering Undergraduate Studies Committee, Year 1 Implementation Committee, Senate Undergraduate Council, UW Registrar's Office and the senate as required by UW policy and practice." This, in my opinion, effectively has killed the deal. See this article for more about this. [Note that the article implies that the proposed MS C# deal would have affected all first year programming classes. This is untrue: only first year CompEng classes would have been affected; CS students would have been fine.]

The very reason that this decision was such as big deal at UW is that it goes so very much against the prevalent attitude there. And the very large amount of negative feedback they got from UW students and profs in the CompEng and CS departments should ensure that something like this doesn't happen again at UW.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 probably helped accelerate this trend (and fits into his 20 year timeline). Basically, it allowed Universities (among other entities) to retain IP rights (i.e., patents) to work done within Universities in the US. See the book Campus Inc.: Corporate Power in the Ivory Tower for more info on this Act of other corporate influences in academia.

Allowing Universities to hold title to their IP sparked the creation of IP offices at many Universities that often, for example, prohibit the release of software written by faculty, staff (or even students!) as free/open source.