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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)
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)
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 law permits me to do lots of things that I choose not - I am not behaving counter to the law.
No, but you are violating a statute of Quantum Mechanics: That which is not forbidden is compulsory.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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...
Two words: public domain.
o urce.org/msg01433.html
s ting-people/199901/msg00052.html
PAPER CUTS: The Golden Fleece
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opens
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/intere
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.
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.
If taxpayer money is used to create the software, then it should be publicly available for free,
If the invention was created with public funds, then the government should retain IP rights, and license the invention to anyone willing to develop it commercially. Any license fees would then return to general revenues, and presumably help offset the cost of providing research grants etc.
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
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.
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.
I beg to differ. I like to see government spending of my money accounted for. I would like to see it used in a way that benefits the interests of the public. If my money is being used to fund research, I would like the research to benefit the public, as opposed to propping up some greedy corporations. If the corporations want to fund research to further their intersts, that's fine with me. I only have a problem with their research being funded with my money.
Of course, this only worked because we had no outside contributions to our code base, but it seems to be a reasonable model.
Stephan
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...
...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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
The GPL does not protect ideas, just the code itself. Nothing in the GPL stops a corporation from copying the ideas from a GPL'ed app and making their own version, they just can't copy it too closely. The GPL protection just makes it more convenient to contribute to the project rather than rewriting it oneself, to encourage people to contribute.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.