mizukami writes: "Salon.com is running a story about universities moving to profit from code they've developed, rather than release it into the public domain as has been the norm in the past. The story gives the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 as a leading cause."
Open source, or truely free?
by
dirk
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This article seems to be stuck on the whole "they should release it open source like Linux" idea. I agree that Universities shouldn't be privatizing their ideas and making gobs of money off them by selling them to private interests. But I think they should give them away so everyone can use them, and the only way to do that is to make them public domain (or possibly something like the BSD license). I know everyone will say the GPL is the best way to go, but as they article said, this is for the public good, and that includes people who don't want to use the GPL. If you want to use this code is a closed source app you wouldn't be able to benefit from this (and that includes individuals as well as corporations). I think if they are going to release it, make it PD or BSD, that way the greatest number of people can benefit from it. GPL is a good license, but it's not the freedom something like this requires. This requires the greatest amount of freedom, not freedom with restrictions that your stuff has to be free as well.
--
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Re:Open source, or truely free?
by
msouth
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I have posted this elsewhere on this article, sorry for the redundancy. I used to think that all govt funded work should be released under GPL, but I eventually realized that "taxpayers" include "people that want to be able to make money on software", so it seems to me that the only way really be fair is to put it in the public domain and then let everyone develop from there. There is no reason to favor GPL'ers over BSD'ers at the regulatory level. The tax money comes from everyone, so everyone should have equal access to the results to use as they wish. I wrote this up in the debate on siliconvalley.com with Mundie and Perens. I saved a copy here:
http://www.fulcrum.org/features/public_domain.ht ml
-- Liberty uber alles.
Don't get me started.
by
Quixote
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This really got to me: Bill Hoskins, who is currently in charge of protecting the intellectual property produced at U.C. Berkeley, thinks it must have been a mistake. "Whoever released the code for the Internet probably didn't understand what they were doing," he says.
No, Mr. Hoskins, they knew what they were doing, apparently you don't. If making money was all that mattered to you, you should've joined a corporation.
Re:Don't get me started.
by
supersnail
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Berkley did not invent the internet, they did not even invent TCP/IP.
They (Bill Joy really) coded an implementation of the TCP/IP protocol which was already defined and implemented on several other systems.
They did add the standard sockets/inetd interface. And the TCP/IP stack as coded is the basis of nearly all current UNIX and all Windows implementations of TCP/IP.
However this happened largely because the code was free (as in beer), if Berkley had tried to charge for thier TCP/IP stack and patent thier sockets implmentation then SUN, Microsoft et all would probably have written thier own version rather than get into a contractual relationship for a fundamental part of thier systems.
This principal applies to almost any part of the internet as it now exits. Free and open software gets used because it is cheap, easy to improve and easy to standardise. Proprietry software is avoided because of expense, vendor lock in, difficulties in standards setting etc.etc.
As Mike Berniers Lee said "If we had charged for Mosaic nobody would have used it".
-- Old COBOL programmers never die.
They just code in C.
This could backfire
by
testy
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If colleges are doing this as a method of enhancing revenue, I have to wonder if they're prepared for the loss of potential alumni contributions that actions like this could cause. There is also the possibility that schools could be found (by a court, for instance, or tax authorities) to be functioning as for-profit entities; that opens up a can of worms that no administrator wants to deal with.
Finally, I'm curious as to how many talented students will be motivated to continue cranking out code for a lab that may take it from them and sell it with no compensation. Comp Sci departments are already struggling with high dropout rates as skilled students leave to make money in full-time positions. I don't see these kinds of actions as ways to encourage good students to stay in school and finish off their degrees.
Re:The dabate of late has been...
by
sql*kitten
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
we need more money for education... well now you have a choice, either they can sell the code they have developed, or taxes can go up...
If NCSA hadn't been quite so... obstructive, the university probably have gotten a huge donation from Netscape Corporation at the height of the bubble, which if they were smart they'd have converted to cash money. The same's true for UCB and Cisco... probably many other situations too, where companies are spun off, or founded by graduates using intellectual property.
Universities aren't built to make money directly be releasing products per se. You can't even count degree-granting as such; your money buys you the right to attend classes and sit exams, not to pass them. Universities also earn money by conducting research for industry, but the nature of research is that it's open-ended and ongoing, more like a time-and-materials contract (like a consulancy) than a units-shipped model (like a games house).
Universities can make money in the private sector, but they way to do it isn't to imitate corporations. Taking equity in a spin off to exploit research funded by the university itself from an internal budget in return for facilities space is a proven model.
Finally, this scenario is different in the UK, where the majority of university funding comes from the taxpayer. The license attached to that code should make it free for use by UK citizens, but charge a fee to everyone else.
Look at FFTW, for instance
by
adadun
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
FFTW, "the fastest Fast Fourier Transform in the West", is an implementation of the DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) that was developed as part of a research project at MIT. FFTW is released under the GPL, and Section 1.4 in their FAQ one can read that they are using the system you describe:
We could instead have released FFTW under the LGPL, or even disallowed non-Free usage. Suffice it to say, however, that MIT owns the copyright to FFTW and they only let us GPL it because we convinced them that it would neither affect their licensing revenue nor irritate existing licensees.
Re:Let's just kill the goose, shall we?
by
dunstan
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Exactly. Look at some of the technologies which were developed by Sun:
NFS - released for free. Widespread.
NeWS - brilliant Windowing system, far better than X. Kept Proprietary. Died.
Java - released for free (effectively). Widespread
To roughly quote Stallman: making people pay money each time they use a copy of your software is the biggest disincentive you can create for its widespread adoption
Dunstan
--
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
Biting the hand that feeds:
by
aphor
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If you think the move to privatize CS research is natural and good, you are mistaken because you do not understand the economics of the scientific process and peer-review. If the universities and labs make valuable software, then why shouldn't they make money off of it? Oh, they should "make money off of it" for sure, I'm not arguing that. What you have to understand about my argument is that you can make money without restricting software distribution. You don't have to say "you can't copy it or use it or see it unless you pay me first."
Economically, it is crucial to learn the difference between economic value and market value. If you say the distinction is unimportant, let me remind you there is no such thing as a free-market economy where economic and market value are fully balanced. There are cases where a thing has more economic value than market value and vice versa.
A piece of research software, in the form of a source tarball, can be compiled into a useful productive component of a machine. It can also be modified, improved, extended, etc. to create a new source tarball which can be compiled into a superior component of a productive machine. The source of the value in any of these elements is the ingenuity of those who created the original source code (or those who created the theory behind it). Most of the combined science of prior history is always a necessary ingredient for this ingenuity and vision.
Newton: "If I have seen far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Ask yourself if you could do without Newtonian Physics on the chance that prior work was unavailable because some greedy short-sighted boob decided not to let anyone read Aristotle (for example) on the off-chance something of great value would come of it and boob would be left out? If you think about it, I.P. licensors are usually assholes trying to set up a retirement plan based on the value of someone else's continuing work.
You can't believe in God if you believe in intellectual property. You can't take it with you!
Now the economy is "adjusting" to the wild ambitions of people who discovered the Internet late... People who were around for the whole thing know that the value of the Internet is actually pent-up demand coming from prior licensing bungling with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Circut-Switched networks are not as efficient as Packet-Switching.
I'm sorry for the livid tone, but I'm tired of all the whining Ayn-Rand type wannabes running around thinking "I'm a good person, I suffer righteously, and I got the other guy down so I'm gonna stick it to him!"
I know (because I'm educated) that the litmus test for what side you're on is whether you believe you're partly responsible to future generations or not. Just think about what kind of world you would like to be born into and live that choice. Damn. I'm too worked up to even finish an argument. I retract everything. Forget I said any of this...
-- ---
Nothing clever here: move along now...
Re: Tuition increases
by
King_TJ
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
No, Universities have not "suddenly gotten greedy". The problem is, they've been too greedy for a long time - and the results are really starting to show!
I place most of the blame at the feet of the upper-level administrators of the colleges and Universities. My father is a PhD, teaching at a state-owned college, and the level of corruption is incredible. The dean and his appointees all give themselves large raises every year, while he announces to the faculty that once again, he won't be able to give out a raise due to budget constraints. He also, of course, feels his job requires the college to provide him with a car.
All of this starts a chain-reaction, where you get only bottom-of-the-barrel teachers willing to work there. These "teachers", in turn, pass students on through the system without ensuring that they've really learned the material. (For the small salaries they're paid, they don't want to put up with fights with students who scream and moan that it's "unfair I got an F in your class!")
These same deans and administrators are more concerned that their campus looks impressive and top-notch than whether or not their teachers are using the latest textbooks. They know that lucrative govt. grants aren't possible without dazzling the TV and print media. In fact, they typically spend so much time being a spokesperson for the college/University, they fail to notice what goes on "day to day" in the institution.
When they do win these grants, do they really help the students? Only partially. Again, grants are great profit-makers for the higher-ups. I've heard stories of schools that hire people full-time just to research and apply for as many grants as possible. Then, these people get a cut of the money off the top as a reward for each one they get.
Re:It's more complicated.
by
msouth
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Disclaimer: I did not read the article.
Second, many government research contracts force the professors to share their code.
Can you back this up? I am not sure why it was in the same paragraph with:
The Mach
kernel, for instance, began life at Carnagie Mellon thanks to government money. Rick Rashid, one
of the project's leaders, released it with a very open BSD-like license. He says that work developed
with the public money deserves to be as free as possible. This has been going on for some time.
In this case, you have a person who realized that decided he should license things this way, and did so. I think that, when it happens, this is why.
I have worked on various projects that were funded by your tax money, and they are now being sold as proprietary software. In that case, the person who got the grant did not decide to put it out as open source. I also do not have numbers to back myself up, but I am guessing that the vast majority of government contracts do not require the source code to be released under a BSD type license.
I wrote something about this on the siliconvalley.com debate with Mundie et al:
Slashdot Mirror
This article seems to be stuck on the whole "they should release it open source like Linux" idea. I agree that Universities shouldn't be privatizing their ideas and making gobs of money off them by selling them to private interests. But I think they should give them away so everyone can use them, and the only way to do that is to make them public domain (or possibly something like the BSD license). I know everyone will say the GPL is the best way to go, but as they article said, this is for the public good, and that includes people who don't want to use the GPL. If you want to use this code is a closed source app you wouldn't be able to benefit from this (and that includes individuals as well as corporations). I think if they are going to release it, make it PD or BSD, that way the greatest number of people can benefit from it. GPL is a good license, but it's not the freedom something like this requires. This requires the greatest amount of freedom, not freedom with restrictions that your stuff has to be free as well.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
This really got to me:
Bill Hoskins, who is currently in charge of protecting the intellectual property produced at U.C. Berkeley, thinks it must have been a mistake. "Whoever released the code for the Internet probably didn't understand what they were doing," he says.
No, Mr. Hoskins, they knew what they were doing, apparently you don't. If making money was all that mattered to you, you should've joined a corporation.
Finally, I'm curious as to how many talented students will be motivated to continue cranking out code for a lab that may take it from them and sell it with no compensation. Comp Sci departments are already struggling with high dropout rates as skilled students leave to make money in full-time positions. I don't see these kinds of actions as ways to encourage good students to stay in school and finish off their degrees.
we need more money for education... well now you have a choice, either they can sell the code they have developed, or taxes can go up...
If NCSA hadn't been quite so... obstructive, the university probably have gotten a huge donation from Netscape Corporation at the height of the bubble, which if they were smart they'd have converted to cash money. The same's true for UCB and Cisco... probably many other situations too, where companies are spun off, or founded by graduates using intellectual property.
Universities aren't built to make money directly be releasing products per se. You can't even count degree-granting as such; your money buys you the right to attend classes and sit exams, not to pass them. Universities also earn money by conducting research for industry, but the nature of research is that it's open-ended and ongoing, more like a time-and-materials contract (like a consulancy) than a units-shipped model (like a games house).
Universities can make money in the private sector, but they way to do it isn't to imitate corporations. Taking equity in a spin off to exploit research funded by the university itself from an internal budget in return for facilities space is a proven model.
Finally, this scenario is different in the UK, where the majority of university funding comes from the taxpayer. The license attached to that code should make it free for use by UK citizens, but charge a fee to everyone else.
Exactly. Look at some of the technologies which were developed by Sun:
NFS - released for free. Widespread.
NeWS - brilliant Windowing system, far better than X. Kept Proprietary. Died.
Java - released for free (effectively). Widespread
To roughly quote Stallman: making people pay money each time they use a copy of your software is the biggest disincentive you can create for its widespread adoption
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
If you think the move to privatize CS research is natural and good, you are mistaken because you do not understand the economics of the scientific process and peer-review. If the universities and labs make valuable software, then why shouldn't they make money off of it? Oh, they should "make money off of it" for sure, I'm not arguing that. What you have to understand about my argument is that you can make money without restricting software distribution. You don't have to say "you can't copy it or use it or see it unless you pay me first."
Economically, it is crucial to learn the difference between economic value and market value. If you say the distinction is unimportant, let me remind you there is no such thing as a free-market economy where economic and market value are fully balanced. There are cases where a thing has more economic value than market value and vice versa.
A piece of research software, in the form of a source tarball, can be compiled into a useful productive component of a machine. It can also be modified, improved, extended, etc. to create a new source tarball which can be compiled into a superior component of a productive machine. The source of the value in any of these elements is the ingenuity of those who created the original source code (or those who created the theory behind it). Most of the combined science of prior history is always a necessary ingredient for this ingenuity and vision.
Newton: "If I have seen far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Ask yourself if you could do without Newtonian Physics on the chance that prior work was unavailable because some greedy short-sighted boob decided not to let anyone read Aristotle (for example) on the off-chance something of great value would come of it and boob would be left out? If you think about it, I.P. licensors are usually assholes trying to set up a retirement plan based on the value of someone else's continuing work.
You can't believe in God if you believe in intellectual property. You can't take it with you!
Now the economy is "adjusting" to the wild ambitions of people who discovered the Internet late... People who were around for the whole thing know that the value of the Internet is actually pent-up demand coming from prior licensing bungling with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Circut-Switched networks are not as efficient as Packet-Switching.
I'm sorry for the livid tone, but I'm tired of all the whining Ayn-Rand type wannabes running around thinking "I'm a good person, I suffer righteously, and I got the other guy down so I'm gonna stick it to him!"
I know (because I'm educated) that the litmus test for what side you're on is whether you believe you're partly responsible to future generations or not. Just think about what kind of world you would like to be born into and live that choice. Damn. I'm too worked up to even finish an argument. I retract everything. Forget I said any of this...
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
No, Universities have not "suddenly gotten greedy". The problem is, they've been too greedy for a long time - and the results are really starting to show!
I place most of the blame at the feet of the upper-level administrators of the colleges and Universities. My father is a PhD, teaching at a state-owned college, and the level of corruption is incredible. The dean and his appointees all give themselves large raises every year, while he announces to the faculty that once again, he won't be able to give out a raise due to budget constraints. He also, of course, feels his job requires the college to provide him with a car.
All of this starts a chain-reaction, where you get only bottom-of-the-barrel teachers willing to work there. These "teachers", in turn, pass students on through the system without ensuring that they've really learned the material. (For the small salaries they're paid, they don't want to put up with fights with students who scream and moan that it's "unfair I got an F in your class!")
These same deans and administrators are more concerned that their campus looks impressive and top-notch than whether or not their teachers are using the latest textbooks. They know that lucrative govt. grants aren't possible without dazzling the TV and print media. In fact, they typically spend so much time being a spokesperson for the college/University, they fail to notice what goes on "day to day" in the institution.
When they do win these grants, do they really help the students? Only partially. Again, grants are great profit-makers for the higher-ups. I've heard stories of schools that hire people full-time just to research and apply for as many grants as possible. Then, these people get a cut of the money off the top as a reward for each one they get.
Second, many government research contracts force the professors to share their code.
Can you back this up? I am not sure why it was in the same paragraph with:
The Mach kernel, for instance, began life at Carnagie Mellon thanks to government money. Rick Rashid, one of the project's leaders, released it with a very open BSD-like license. He says that work developed with the public money deserves to be as free as possible. This has been going on for some time.
In this case, you have a person who realized that decided he should license things this way, and did so. I think that, when it happens, this is why.
I have worked on various projects that were funded by your tax money, and they are now being sold as proprietary software. In that case, the person who got the grant did not decide to put it out as open source. I also do not have numbers to back myself up, but I am guessing that the vast majority of government contracts do not require the source code to be released under a BSD type license.
I wrote something about this on the siliconvalley.com debate with Mundie et al:
http://www.fulcrum.org/features/public_domain.html
Liberty uber alles.