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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.
...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
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...
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.
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.
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.
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