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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)
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!"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
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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
This is not true, in my experience. No-one with any sense naively accepts selling price as a true measure of worth. The academic community has a process of peer review and publication. Research that is published in a reputable journal, or produced by a reputable scientist will be valued highly. Research, whether "open source", or sold for $5, $1000,000, by a crackpot will be ignored.