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Researchers' Right To Open Source Research
bstadil writes: "There is an interesting debate over at SiliconValley.com about the right of researchers funded by Universities to make their IP Open Source. It's not at all simple. On one side Universities claiming their derive 5% of their Budget from IP licenses and it's vital for continued high level of 'Output,' on the other hand researcher who claim the public is billed twice by licensing the output."
in my mind, the eventual disposition of the IP rights depend on where the funding for the research came from. in public institutions, like state schools, this should be clear: they're public institutions, funded by public money, so the public should get the benefits. that's simply an evolution of the original concept of public educations: we give money to educational institutions so society as a whole can benefit. in private institutions, it's less clear, since the public money (almost all private universities still get lots of public money) is usually a minority. but lots of big companies help fund research in public schools and still expect to get the results, and that doesn't make sense.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I don't think either of the situations described in the article make sense: either a researcher is forced by her university to keep the source private, or she's forced (through the proposed laws agains "billing the public twice") to open it. I don't think either one needs to be the case, and I think what we have now is actually pretty sensible.
And what is the situation now? Basically, researchers are employed by the university. You can ask your employer (as you could working anywhere) to open a project's source, but in the end it's a management decision. I mean, there are probably some guys at Microsoft who'd like to open the IIS source to get rid of some bugs, but it just doesn't make sense given the business model in use. Researchers are always free to look for employment elsewhere, just like everyone else.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
They can't honestly expect me to agree with them when they state that since taxpayers fund the university, they shouldn't have to pay for products the university develops. Taxpayers pay for a lot of things, include government research grants, but no-one who pays their taxes believes that they somehow 'own' a share of that research! Taxes are just taxes, nothing more.
A School actually passing on knowledge for the education of others.
Who'd of thunk it?
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
The movement also runs counter to U.S. laws that permit publicly funded schools to enter into exclusive licensing agreements with private companies
Just because something is legal, doesn't mean that not doing that something is bad.
The law permits me to do lots of things that I choose not - I am not behaving counter to the law.
This is brought up again later,
``I think the Bayh-Dole Act is one of the great economic success stories in the nation,'' said Terry Young, executive director of the Texas A&M Technology Licensing Office. He says the law should remain untouched.
Again, irrelevent. The law lets universities do things. If some people don't want to enter into exclusive agreements, then the status of the law is unchanged.
http://www.thehungersite.com
Consider a situation where researchers come across some discovery that is really great at improving cosmetic surgery, and there are cosmetic medical equipment makers dying to get hold of said technology. Isn't the public served better by having the researchers charge for this new technology instead of giving it out for free? My point is that not all discoveries are useful especially for pressing human needs, and universities would do better to charge for them and funnel that money into cheaper tuition, rather than let people get cheaper nose jobs.
Yes this is stupid but it's not a troll.
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
But he says the money isn't the issue -- it's respect. Open source publishing devalues what they do, he said....
"I don't think computer programmers should be treated any differently than other scientists,'' Green said. "It sort of diminishes the stature of the science."
And I'm sure that the private funding to get the desired results out of research (i.e. tobbaco harm studies funded by RJ Reynolds) doesn't diminsh the stature of real science. They seem to diminsh science more than the people who publish their findings. Take any of the great scienctists: Einstein, Curie, Borh...they all published and shared their studies for the sake of bettering science and making a name for themsleves. What happened over the last century to make researches into money-grabbers?
Research funded by grants and government funding should be open. I'm all for capitalism, but if the public is going to "invest" in these schools and consistantly get nothing in return, we're getting fleeced.
As the article states, very few of these properties are lucrative and it's like the administrators are holding on to a free lottery ticket. I won't pay for my own gambling, let alone someone elses.
That's not my hand.
...only to Bill Gates or Richard Stallman.
Bill Gates thinks that all the software in the world should be licensed, (and he should hold the license).
Richard Stallman on the other hand, thinks that all the software in the world should be licensed, (and he should write the license).
To everyone else, I think it depends what you are trying to achieve with your software.
Would the IP protocol be here today if it hadn't been open source? Would Linux? Would Doom? [Doom: It's free, then it isn't!, then it's open source!]
I think it depends what you think is more important: great software or great profits
Personally I like both- and Doom shows one way to get the best of both worlds; but there's plenty of other ways through this particular maze.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I'm a graduate student at Oxford University, and in the University's statutes they claim ownership of any code I write while I'm here. I am negotiating with them to try to get permission to release some of my work -- right now I'm working on network protocols, and a protocol isn't much use if nobody uses it -- and they haven't been entirely unreasonable, but after two months I still haven't got anything in writing.
It is one thing for a university to claim ownership of work produced by their employees; it is quite another for a university to claim ownership of work produced by people who are paying to be there.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
For decades campus computing was largely ignored, but now that there's real money in it, the unblinking gaze of the bean counters is focused upon it (being the dinosaurs that they are, it will take a few years for the nerve impulses of the dotcom die off to reach such the central administrative nerve center).
The true meaning of this attention, while originally flattering, has begun to sink into the mind of the researchers, and predictably they have discovered the faustian nature of their bargain.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
The article doesn't address a pretty fundamental issue here.
:) Hyeah... get something for free and sell it back to us... yet that argument is made all the time and it makes sense to some judges in these cases. Bah!
Where and how is public funding being used? Where and how is private funding being used? Where are the overlaps in this case?
One could, of course, argue that since the research is being held within buildings paid for by public funds, using utilities paid for by public funds, that certainly the public holds an interest in all cases where such research is being carried out.
Private interests have an interest in seeing the work completed and the institutions themselves have an interest in licensing fees coming back to them as well.
This is a confusing problem. It's certainly not black and white now is it? If I were judge, however, I would rule in the public's interest. I view public funding as a moral obligation to return something to the public after accepting money from it. If private interests are allowed to influence where the results of research goes, then the private institution should be billed for the amount of public funds used during the course of the research.
As for the institution itself charging license fees... wow... that's an interesting one isn't it. To that I would answer, YES! Charge license fees all you want, but only to private interests and not to public ones.
Hrm... I'd say that was a fair assessment of this situation. If I were judge over this matter, I would rule in this way.
HOWEVER... we know that's not what is likely to happen is it?
Corporation A and B's lawyers will argue that public interests are served by providing a quality product for sale resulting from all of this research...
All things exist, in space and time, they are merely ours to discover. Stanford, I can understand as it's a private school, but UC Berkeley hasn't a leg to stand on. Perform a service, do some research for IBM or such, sure, but it occurs to me that if a public institution claims ownership then it should be public. No secrets, no problem. Probably something else behind this is schools competing for prestige. UCB and Stanford both have a large number of Nobel prize winners, each. But that's no excuse for double charging the public, taxes, tuition, etc. + license fees.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This approach has a better chance of working for universities than it does for ordinary commercial enterprises, for at least two reasons:
Besides, this is exactly the sort of issue on which we should look to universities to lead the way. Open source is an important form of cooperation, and its heritage is the very academic freedom and open sharing of information pioneered by universities. There are benefits to this cooperation that may not be completely in conflict with the profit motive; however, the truth of that claim can only be verified by those with sufficient vision to look beyond the next quarter's results. Universities are one of the few organizations which have both the vision and financial ability to do that. MIT's recent decision to make its course material freely available over the web is an example of this.
``If taxpayer money is used to create the software, then it should be publicly available for free,'' said Harry Mangalam, of tacg Informatics in Irvine, Calif. ``The public is being billed twice right now.''
Notice, please that he said "IF". Damn straight, if by extension "I/we" are funding these projects we should have the right to see what we are getting for our money. Taxes, tuition and student fees in addition to private funding, everyone has a claim, right? Everyone has rights to the code and the results.
Of course the opening paragraph was very telling:
Before computer whiz Steven E. Brenner accepted his tenure-track research post at the University of California-Berkeley last year, he demanded that the school's intellectual property police leave him alone.
Amen. It seems like the "good of mankind" feeling is winning over the "for the good of corporation kind"... now that code is free speech (for the moment) maybe he should have his own DeCSS like mirror for his code?
And let me get this straight:
The school in question is both publically and privatly funded, correct? IP disputes occur and are won by whoever has the most money, correct?
This, to me at least, sounds like a warped verions of prostitution, and in prostitution STD's are the result of...ahem..."Passing the *uck, around"...so the idea that IP ~= STD is forming in my mind.
What I am driving at is that Intellectual Property is a "Socially Transmitted Disease".
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The the license should clearly be public domain.
If the researcher doesn't like that, then he's not talking about open source, but some other motive.
The vast majority of buisnessmen, universities, and companies want to throw licences around like they are candy. However they don't seem to realise that the profit motive is irrelevant when you are licensing things that are not, in and of themselves, profitable.
Those that are guilty of this stupidity at the highest levels are only shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to producing things that are good for licensing. Simply, licensing something you need to make a new product that is either broken or inefficent, hiding it from developers, and then using it to build a new product results in a product that may or may not be broken or inefficent. When the building part is unprofitable, it is simply arrogance and stupidity that results in the failure of that which it helps to create.
Computer science is a young field. We can produce papers and show one result without having to back them up with anything other than our word. _SOME_ computer scientists have the courage to put out their source, but now it sounds like the universities are pressuring them not to.
Biology has a culture such that if you produce a new mutant line and write a paper about your discovery, ANYONE can ask you for your line. If you don't produce it, you will loose any respect you might have built up over the years. How do universities handle this?
Let's just imagine if computer science was this way. If you produce a paper, you had to be willing to give the code. If someone took your code and found it wanton or you were unwilling to give up your code, it would be assumed that you faked it. Ouch! That would suck. It would certainly slow down our field, but I think at some point this should be the case.
I think that research work done while taking money from the NSF and other public agencies should be freely available to the public. In general this means that the research is published in public refereed journals that anyone can buy and read. In some sense the "intellectual property" of the research is being given away to the public, since anyone can read it. In another sense, the researcher and the university "own" the idea since no-one else can claim credit for it. But products and patentable ideas get a bit murkier.
I think everyone agrees that it is immoral for someone to do research while accepting public money and then keep the research secret and proprietary (except in extraordinary circumstances). There is also something fishy about a company being granted exclusive rights for an idea that was developed using public funds. The universities would like to patent everything themselves, but in practice it is often the decision of the researcher whether an idea should or should not be patented.
If I am on a project and write code, I ask whoever is in charge if I may release the code to the public. If they say no, I would want a pretty convincing explanation of why not. I don't think public research should have any secrets.
This article is just the tip of the iceberg. I did my PhD and post-doc at a large research university. The dirty secret that they never tell you is that the claim ownership to everything you think or do. I do mean everything ... if you are a particle physicist and come up with a better way to start seedlings for the home garden in your basement completely outside of the work environment, they own it. Of course they claim that it's in the inventor's best interest that they own it because they have the backing to market things... for a small 90% commision of course. The IP grab is on and it's not just in the business world. The dirtiest part of this is that I've never seen any acedemic environment where they tell you this up front.
... it's a somewhat acadmeic position. When I interviewed I asked explicitly about IP policy and was told that IP for things outside of work was not covered. It turns out that after you accept the position and can get into the doc's on the internal network they are claiming complete ownership of everything too. Good thing I filed for patent on a few things during the previous gig and didn't wait.
The IP agreement for my last job attempted to be just about as greedy. I made them add a clause saying that anything I invent on my own time that's not directly related to their business is entirely mine and that have no claim on said material.
The current position is still being hashed out
Melvin Kelvin, descendant of the esteemed Lord Kelvin credited with the discovery of absolute zero has begun suing world thermometer makers for patent infringement...
It's just as silly, evil, and wrong to patent algorithms as to patent math or basic science discoveries... what if Leibnitz and Newton patented calculus? Boy, I'd love to have a patent on pi...
Patents don't protect inventors anyway... just look at how RCA held up Philo Farnsworth's Television patent in court until it expired and he couldn't get any money for it.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
This is one of the better approaches to IP (at least the current one is) I have seen, because unless you are hired to x, x is your property.
Two comments:
:-(.)
A large number of people have mentioned "public funded, therefore public property. However, there are many companies who scratch a living from SBIR's from NSF and/or NIH (small business innovative research grants). Public money, but not public use.
Is it reasonable?
Second, some university IP places will consider dual licenses as a good thing; a public OS license, and a second closed license (costing $$) for those interested in closed-source use. However, it depends on the investigator (after all, sales of software or libraries usually require some (limited) form of support, which isn't what most of us want to provide).
I'm speaking as a prof at a Uni, and am dual-employed (joint position) at a second non-profit research institution, which DOESN'T have the same flexibility as my Uni position (the latter "own everything...", though I'm looking at changing this at some point, at least for my own work). It makes life interesting, some times...
Note that it's why I like the GPL - using GPL'd licensed software restricts the licenses that the university can use -- it's my research, and if I am supposed to distribute the results, then there is only one approach that can be taken. W/o the GPL, the university has much more control over the license (though by the same token, they could restrict redistribution, that being the only alternative
Blind Globe: the choice of a silly generation
Commercial research maximises profits, not progress. People who make real breakthroughs won't be accepted in a commercial research model, because they don't conform to the norm -- after all if a researcher finds out that a billion-dollar drug is useless that is not going to look good for the university -- people have been killed for less. Any university which goes down that road is going to guarantee it ends up producing mediocre incremental advances. We don't need any more zantacs, we need smart people with intellectual freedom -- if we can't collectively afford that then we are doomed.
And where would you draw the line?
:-).
At my current company I "signed my life away" as part of the employment contract.
The contract basically states that anything I create while being employed by the current employer will be theirs. It does not seem to matter if I create it on my personal computer and use none of the company's resources.
As a matter of fact, most of the things I've created have not been based on anything provided by the company (aside from company paperwork which I'd be happy to give them the rights to
Some software specific to integrate with the company's other software and hardware have I created on one of their Laptops. I could just as well have created everything on my own PCs, but since it's tied to stuff from the company (by use or intended use) I see no moral dilemma handing it to them.
The question is; where do you draw the line between what can be seen entitled to the company / university? If a CS student is "inventing" something and only uses his/her own equipment, is that enough to give him/her the rights to use it?
Do the universities include "knowledge", which the student paid to receive, as university "resource" and thus are eligible to make claims regardless? If CS students base all their work on material bought privately from, say "Amazon.com", would that be enough to get the University's IP hoard off their back?
For my part, I've seriously thought of jumping the boat next time I feel a discussion will come up about an "invention", claiming a patent, which I deem is valuable for a larger audience.This is before I make it known to the company.
As it is now, I might get a $5000 award for something regardless whether it's value is tens, hundreds or more.
Where are the rest of you standing on this delicate issue? How do you reason each time something you create are up for a patent?
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
To answer this question, just ask: why have Universities in a capitalist society?
The idea behind capitalism is that, if something is of public benefit, someone will do it and sell it for a profit.
For some "things" though, this doesn't work, because it's not possible to control the spread of the benefit so that the provider can make a profit. Economists call these "positive externalities". Education and basic research are classic examples. Ford may derive benefit from having a educated populace, but it won't pay for people's educations, because other firms would derive the benefit, too.
I think the answer to the question is clear: Universities should "open" all research results. If research has a containable economic benefit, it can be done by a private firm, and the public shouldn't be subsidizing it in the form of salaries, grants, facilities, etc.
When public universities pursue IP revenue, they are succombing to the natural desire of any organization to grow -- but that urge needs to be kept in check by government looking out for the taxpayers bottom line. If increasingly more can be done for society by the private sector, then the public sector needs to be able to shrink. (And if not, then not.)
IP laws today are "cannot" based. As in you cannot use unless you have approval, etc.
This practice needs to change to "Can" based laws. As in you can use but if you receive monies for doing so, you must direct a percentage back to the IP holder.
Though this doesn't directly address the public vs. private investment direction, I believe it would cause such a change in IP application perspective that would be far more beneficial to all involved. And that is what the overall objective is of IP laws - to benefit humanity to the greatest potential possible.
There has been several articles this past month or so on slashdot that go into the benefits and differences of private and public IP holdings. Now the hing to do is to merge the benefits of both into laws that everyone can better live with. IP "CAN" based laws.
Closed-source software developers pay for that software too and are also members of the public.
The Silicon Valley article is a bit misleading, and doesn't accurately reflect the range of distribution alternatives being used for Bioinformatics software. It is certainly true that many Universities claim ownership of computer software copyrights, but it is important to appreciate that there many levels at which the implementation of these policies is decided. For example, both the WU-BLAST and the HMMer packages were developed by researchers at Washington U. in St. Louis. WU-BLASTbinaries are available to academics after an appropriate license is signed, and licensed commercially. HMMer i is available under the GPL but a commercial license is also available.
Likewise, the FASTA package, can be freely downloaded by both academic and commerical users, but must be licensed from the U. of Virginia to be redistributed. This has allowed the software to be widely used by researchers and also incorporated into commerical packages.
As a Bioinformatics researcher and software author, my goal is to have my research and software be used as widely as possible. This improves my ability to obtain future external funding, to get my papers cited, etc. etc. Even at universities like Wisconsin and Stanford, which derive enormous sums from IP licensing, these funds are less than 10% the value of NIH and other external funding. Thus, it is not hard to argue that software licensing policies should maximize the likelihood of external funding, and the widest possible distribution (though not necessarily GPL) is likely to have the greatest impact and long term benefit. (Moreover, once software becomes widely used, it is much more valuable commercially.)
Thus, while a university's Vice-President for Research may be interest in IP licensing, a Dept. Chairman may be more interested in faculty success in obtaining external funding, and a broader software distribution.
But if the IP is to be licensed to some, it should be licensed to all on a non-decriminatory basis. And that rules out no-cost, open source licenses, because it gives insufficient benefits to the funders or the thing funded. Open source licenses are just for vanity or attempts to control subsequent use.
In addition, it seems like a great deal of the software described in biology articles is not available in an Free Software or Open Source form.
Both of these disciplines, at least as far as the academic side is concerned, need to remember what academia is all about ("Is it good for humanity?").
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
If the public universities are going to do this, then the money should be pooled and used to support ALL the schools. It was our money that went into it so use it for all.
Public domain would be better so that anyone could use it for whatever they want to. After all, everyone payed taxes for it's development.
This is just part of the trend to distribute risk among the public while privatizing profit. Welcome to America.
A choice of masters is not freedom
Wouldn't you know it, my mod points expired yesterday.
Richard Stallman thinks that all the software in the world should be licensed so everyone can use it. Bill Gates is a megalomaniac. Richard Stallman is at worst a populist demagogue, but I think if you look at what he's done with his life and compare it to anyone else you'll see that his motivations have to do with making software free for everyone, not personal fame, riches or glory.
A lot of people who live in glass houses are throwing stones at Stallman these days. Show some respect. Free software would be nowhere without him.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
As a biologist (?), you understand that an entity that lacks competition within their niche will not experience any of the selective pressure that would cause them to improve. Applied to this case, if a researcher's software is freely licensed, companies will have to compete vigorously to have high quality implementations. If one company has an exclusive license, the implementation will tend to be of the poorest quality that will seem to the buyer to be better than nothing.
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Amazingly insightful post for Slashdot.
(No, I'm not being sarcastic)
I spotted I think five typos in the original post. Would you people stop trying to get it out quick and make sure you get it out correctly, PLEASE? It is as though this bboard (Slash-whatever) is being run by teenagers.
Lots of universities save more than 5%, by having undergrads write and develop entire systems.
If they do claim IP property, they must
1) Acknowledge contributers - and pay them a token amount
2) Accept the risk that if they modify or derive other works - the ex-student could one day sue their asses off or seek royalities
3) Accept the fact that if they are not storing the ENTIRE development process, claims that it is theirs will not travel too far.
I agree with above, specific grants might be made on O/S or treated differently, but at the same time, the grants would cost 50% more, so the entire documentation process made airtight.
If the universities want more money, then they should go after the US govt for patent infringement and not paying royalities. Cross referencing ex graduates against patent holders, against thesis archives would keep lawyers busy for eons.
The money, sadly is not in open source software. It is in drug R+D, Defence, energy, and exploration gizmos Students who cobble up software to drive these home made gizmo's get further outside grants and seed money. You want to put the brakes on this ?
Old saying - if it aint broke dont fix it.
...it's a damn shame that he's largely unknown by the public, not unlike Tesla.
He'd invented numerous devices, 165 of them in fact, many revolving around television. RCA screwed him out of their value- Sarnoff, the CEO of RCA at that time, did everything he could to destroy Farnsworth in the courts.
Because of this, devices like the Fusor, perhaps the smallest working hot fusion device ever devised, went by the wayside until recently.
Fusor Links:
Fusor Patent at the USPTO
A 1999 article in American Scientist about the Fusor
Richard Hull's webpages
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
By the way, thanks! Last year, about $0.10 of your tax bill (on average) went to solar physics research.
What exactly is the agreement I have with the University?
Briefly, my agreement with the University allows me, as well as members of my group, to produce open source software so long as:
(1) all authors agree for the software to be open source,
(2) the funding source agrees with the code being open source, and
(3) no laws are broken (including aspects of patent law embodied in the Bayh-Dole act).
Note that while this agreement permits my group to produce open source software, it does not require that we produce open source software. This is a blanket agreement covering all of my software written at the University.
Who funded this research?
The agreement covers all of my software development, regardless of source (though, as noted above, each source must be consulted). It was drawn up before I had any funding, as part of my employment agreement. Since then, my research has been funded from public sources (NIH, NSF, DOE, LBNL, and the University of California), and from a private charity (a Searle Scholarship).
Some clarifications of my views, where the article was imprecise
- I believe it is desirable for authors to be allowed to produce open source software. At this point, I think it would be inappropriate for it to be required, as others have proposed. I currently have no problem with other scientists who readily distribute their software but not use open source licenses.
- I believe that prospective authors of open source should approach their Universities with a standard contract similar to mine. I do not presently support a movement to "force universities to allow 'open source' publishing," as the article states.
- I am not opposed to the Novartis/Syngenta agreement at Berkeley, as the article suggests. In fact, I have not studied that agreement carefully, and so I have no considered view of it. My impression is that much being said here about the agreement is incorrect.
- I feel that fixing bugs is only one of many benefits of open source, and probably not the primary benefit (as the article suggests)
- My agreement does not run counter to laws that allow the University to enter exclusive licensing agreements. The primary law governing such agreements is Bayh-Dole, which covers patents. My agreement only covers copyright. Moreover, my agreement has as a prerequisite permission from the funding source.
- I agree with Phil Green that many individuals have greater respect for software that they've paid for. No problem: have both an Open Source and a commercial license for the code (as is the case for important programs like HMMER).
Some closing notes...I welcome follow-up postings here and will try to answer further questions that arise.
Steven E. Brenner
http://compbio.berkeley.edu
they need arguments like this
they need you
you can be heard
they need you
infrastructure, like roads and power. simple? okay, now you also get things like laws, which aren't really like roads and power, but they are a service, and you expect them, they're part of the deal.
this doesn't mean you get free science toys, but you should not be charged for the know-how to make the toy, if you helped fund it's design.
if I want a t-shirt, and one is a shoddy piece of work I can pay $5 for,
and the other is free and well-made,
the fact that money is involved does not make me think the crap one is any better.
stop and think before repeating marketroid rubbish.
their business is to brainwash, to convince you that the stupid is the intelligent, the boring is the compelling.
it's their job.
these are the things they are looking for
Good luck finding a bureaucrat in the university that:
1. Really understands the issue and
2. Will stick his/her neck out and give you a sheet of paper.
Sometimes it is more practical to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
None of the views of the petition go against any law, Bayh-Dole or other, that's just yellow journalism on the part of Silicon Valley. In fact all NSF and NIH program directors that we've discussed the petition with are all in favor of Open Source. They just feel that because of Bayh-Dole, the can't require that software be released Open Source.
Also, if you want to read the in-depth discussion that we had with Phil Green, take a look at the mailing list archive here, instead of the tiny piece that silicon valley completely misquoted.
Therefore they have the right to declare the IP Public Domain, but not the right to restrict it with the GPL?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The current situation sucks... It sucks scinetifically, and it sucks ethically. Rather than focus on the problems with the ethics of funding private research with public money, I will focus on another aspect-- the pursuit of relatively unbiased information. Although all information is somewhat biased, the question is whether it is reasonably unbiased.
One of the real problems I see occuring is in the area of environmental studies, where researchers from a given univerity may become unwilling to publish studies which hurt wealthy corporate sponsors. The same goes for nutritional research and many other things. Yes, academia is full of politics, but this adds to the mix some really troubling possibilities.
I think that public research should be available for the public, not only because we are the ones that paid for it but also because it is in everyone's best interest to have the academic community contribute to the "intellectual commons" rather than beint the unwitting pawns in the business plans of various corporations. If this requires higher taxes, then we should be ready and willing to pay it.
Would YOU trust environmental research on the effects of genetically modified organisms if the research came out of a university whose major corporate "partner" was Monsanto?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Companies pay taxes and should thus also benefit.
This is also my big beef with GPL. We should encourage people to take idea's from others, add their own stuff and make a profit on it. This is the basis of our society, building on the work of others. I don't think we should force altruism on other people's work.
A _moderate_ form of patents + copyrights (with a right to fair use) seems to fit very well with this. In the case of research by public institutions I believe that they should be allowed to patent/copyright their work and sell it to companies if this allows (much) more research to be done. The companies that would pay for the patents get much more profits/advantages than would be 'fair' for the taxes they pay. Companies pay IMHO for the general advances in science that are brought about. They cannot claim to have a right on everything developed by public institutions (we can choose to make it free, but IMO it is not a right).
But overall I'm not convinced that patents are worth the trouble. It seems to cost more than it makes at our university (TUDelft, nanotubes, glare, etc).
Question: are you angry at the few cents per CD that go to Philips and Sony? Would you be angry if that money went to research?
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The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
What everybody is ignoring is the these are software guys supporting biological research in biological science. For all of their work they are probably getting zip for credit.
The hot-shot prof directing the grunts in the lab is getting the credit, and doleing it out as he sees fit.
Maybe just maybe the Comp Sci people get mentioned somewhere in the article. We have no idea how many different fields the analysis could be applied to nor do we know if the software research might actualy be much greater than the bio research its supporting. Very probably the software is much more important the the data it analyses, or even the original research, and could represent many years of effort.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Here in Sweden, the results of research and other IP:s are -personal- property of the researchers.
The university has no claim to it. This, of course has led to a lot of university professors starting their own businesses on the side, to capitalize from their research.
Of course, the universities here want a system more like the US.
In principle, I would agree with the idea that public institutions should release everything free, but the same people who want free goodies also piss and moan every time April 15 comes around and whenever there's a tuition increase. Until this changes, so-called "public" institutions are not going to be primarily publically funded.
If you want truly public institutions, then, people, you have to pay for them. There's no infinite teat o' money.
i know where i stand. if i produce something i think is valuable i let them keep paying me (if its a company) and improve it while sitting on it. i of course use their resources to do it (making sure that i use a good file wiper and encryption)..then when it becomes good enough quit the job and start your own company. spend 3 or so months setting the company up (and making it look like youre developing the product) and then make money.
simple.