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Should Public Funds Mean Public Code?
Lisa points to this article on oreillynet with "two opposing viewpoints on whether all software created by publicly funded research should be licensed as open source, and the chance to weigh in yourself." Open-source software (under whatever license) seems to me like a good way to multiply the investment of tax dollars that public funding relies on, but the counterarguments offered here are interesting.
Publicly funded research should all either be public domain or BSD style, definatly NOT GPL, since that ends up in the same duplication of work. Anything GPL has to be duplicated at least once to get it as something BSD/PD so that everyone can use it.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Why do our public dollars fund private efforts?
I have never understood why we give tons of money to companies/universities/etc only to see the ideas patented or something else, and not released to the general public for use. If you were paid by the public, let the public have the benefits.
What if we paid Company X to build a bridge on private lands with public money, to only be used by the person who owns the private land. It just doesn't seem right.
This will probably be modded as a troll...
But I don't think that public funds should dictate the use of public code. IT certainly shouldn't exclude it either. I think that they should go to the most cost effective solution that meets the needs.
Sometimes that means open source. Sometimes it doesn't. Nothing should be excluded.
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
I hate the idea that a large company goes into a University and "donates" some equipment but to use it the school must sign away the rights to work done on the equipment.
So you have Billons public $$ going to support the infrastructure of the university and then with a small( think million $$ ) donation some company reaping potentially huge rewards.
But not necessarily public domain. The BSD model seems to have done quite well.
And this should extend to not only code, but any research. How can Univ. of XYZ get a government grant, and then have the university, the prof, or the private company who pitched in some spending money get ALL of the rights to the results of the project?
Kind of a dumb question to ask around these parts.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Hello, I think it would be very interesting to make an FOIA request for the source code to some small insignifigant government application. The source code is produced via public funds and belongs to the people just like any other government document. Anyone ever tried this?
Douglas Calvert
I agree with Mr. Dalke in that you can't just apply blanket policies like this. There are always going to be exceptions and fuzzy areas. To absolutely force all public-funded works to provide the source to their projects without considering special cases seems negligent at best.
Having attended a public university (go bruins), I find the idea of universities profiting from publicly funded research offensive. From my personal experience, I know there were enough politicians within the UC system. Let's nip this thing now rather than encourage more professional politicians to be drawn to our centers of higher learning by the profit motive.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
everything that is publicly funded should mean public code UNLESS that would open the system for expoitation. if it would then chances are the system is badly designed in the first place and people should have their money put into just projects.
the only problem is that a mixed public and private investment problems could create some concens with the private companies, however public code is rightly deserved by the public if the public own the project. the uk is now taking a step forward in opening up public services:
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
Code is no different than any other property...
Are Television shows created with public funds available for my use as source material in my own movies?
Are works of art (like the infamous Mapelthorpe photos) considered in the 'public domain'?
I honestly don't know the answer, but I'm sure someone has thought about this in another domain. I wish people would stop thinking that code/cyberspace is really as new and challenging as it seems.
-db
The argument that much of what is currently being developed is closed is a strawman. There will always be this argument, but the longer we wait, the more time it will take to change when the time actually comes. It would be better to change now, absorb the bump, and continue. (And given the pressure, many of the closed source systems could become open source (IE, pay $X to Joe Roberts so that he will change his code from propietary to GPL, etc.)
Fellowship 9/11
How could it be otherwise? If they license the software that they used our tax money to produce are they then going to reduce our taxes accordingly? Send us all dividend checks? Ha! I don't think so.
The only reasonable way to do it is to release the software under the GPL so that it cannot ever become closed software when used by anyone else.
Remember Lexington Green!
We are not talking about not being able to benefit from the product of publicly funded projects. We are talking about whether you need to see the source code in order to enjoy the benefits. I can see cases where companies pull their products out of a university out of fear of it being open-sourced.
Maybe a center position can be reached here. Let's face it, universities need funding, be it from government or the private sector. If a license was used that allowed non-commercial use of code, but forced a company to pay a fee for it's use in a commercial project, makes the most sense to me. The university benefits, due to selling it's software. Business benefits, due to getting great software for further development/exploitation. We benefit, because we get to use the same stuff for our projects. Cool, eh?
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
The author of the article opposing release of publicly funded works under an open source license seems to have a misconception as to what common free software licenses say constitutes source code. From the anti-OSS article:
Open source licenses rarely require that local changes be distributed. Open source licenses do not set a limit on the fees charged. Open source licenses set no restriction on when, how, or where the source is distributed (with minor exceptions). As an open source publisher I am free to release my source code only once a year, at a charge of $1 million paid at least two months in advance, and you have to accept it on paper tape while we are both standing under the Eiffel Tower. (I'll cover my own travel arrangements if you take me up on this.) If I am the original copyright holder I'm even allowed to obfuscate the code by removing comments, using nonsense variable names, and other tricks.
This conflicts with the most common definition of source code. The GNU General Public License, one of the most popular free software licenses, specifies the following in section 3: "Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange," that is, something other than paper tape. Also, "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it," meaning that if reasonable comments aid modification, leave them in.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If a project was entirely funded by public funds, then the intellectual property rights for that project belong the the public and that project should be in the public domain.
It should not be open source, whether GPL, BSD, Artistic License, whatever! My tax dollars should not go to push your opensource political agenda. The source code should be made part of the final progress report for the project, and I should be able to modify it to my hearts content (funded by non-government resources) without even thinking about releasing the source to my modifications. In the same way, if you want to setup a foundation that warehouses public projects, makes modifications to the code and relicenses it under an open source license more power to you.
I'm working closely with the Holsten act, which basically esnures that when the government pays a private researcher a grant, they're paying for the results of the research, not "property of the labor". You know how a company "owns" anything you think up on company time? (If you read the contract carefully). Well it doesn't work that way with government-funded research, since the Holsten act. You can google for links, the implications have been discussed a great deal over the past few years...
Hope this helps.
-Paul.
Granted, if the idea is that *all* software written which is funded by public money were to be open sourced, then Mr. Dalke has a point. But surely, it is a trivial exercise to modify the proposal to say, for example, that all software that is derived from proprietary software cannot fall under this order.
IMHO, if an idea is unworkable in its present form, see if you can modify the idea to fit reality before tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
But what if public funds are used by the CIA to create a piece a software that spies on China or Cuba for example ? would you expect it to be open-sourced ? I hope not : the difference between the word processor and the spying software is, the former is a piece of software that people's tax money pays for, but latter is a tool to maintain national security.
But I do not agree that it should be GPL'd if it was built with public money. Rather, I think that software built with public funds should be given to the public domain. Once released to the public domain, if you want to use the source code in your own proprietary product, though, that's an acceptable re-use - provided that the underlying public source code is never removed from the public record.
It's a question of where the line should be drawn. I believe in the GPL on principle, and I would not shed any tears if all software developed through government funding were GPL. But the forced opening of software that is derived from the GPL'd root program isn't necessarily the best way to go about things. If you release software developed by government grant as PD, then the basic tools are free to the community and there's an opportunity for commercial interests to build upon it - hopefully using an Open Source license at the very least, but perhaps not. At that point it's up to the marketplace to reward companies that keep their software open.
If an institution develops it without using government dollars, what they do with the subsequent code is their business. But what they do with our money is everyone's business. If we don't like what a private company does, we are welcome to not consume their products or services, steering our dollars away from them. But when it's our tax dollars, we do not get the same choice. And I, for one, see a line between people using a free product (obtained out of the public domain) to make money, and people building a profitable product that I can't have, using my tax money to build it. I definitely feel the latter is worse.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Actually, like most other government-created/publicly-funded works (e.g., the legal code, etc.), the software should be released into the public domain. All software licenses, including the GPL, place restrictions upon code whether or not you believe the GPL is a good restriction or not, its still a restriction.
Liberty in your lifetime
I've done work for the civil court system and land records offices in my area. Their records - all of them - are public. But it's not like any of their information is "sensitive". Thus, open-sourcing any of their software doesn't present any real risk.
On the other hand, an organization like, say the NSA is publicly funded with American tax dollars. It would be impossible to say that open-sourcing their software wouldn't present any real risk.
It really is an organization-to-organization call.
My sigs always suck.
Kind of like TurboTax, but for free. And if it's open-source, so much the better, you can cheat on your taxes and still blame it on the software :)
But IP that gets developed on my dime? That should never fall into private hands, no exceptions. I'm not paying taxes to subsidize the making of someone else's fortune on royalties or patent licensing fees. It's theft. If fees are to be charged for the use of the IP in question, then it should go back to the national treasury. I'm also very much in favor of making it retroactive, and punishing those who have made their fortunes by stealing IP from the rest of us.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
that's so cute.
now go back and read the 'dissenting' opinion, then try constructing a rational response against it. it's a thoughtful argument by an unbiased (or perhaps biased towards open source) observer, and it addresses real shortcomings of a specific proposal.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
I've worked on one of these types of projects at a University. There were so many corporate sponsors and other government agencies, each with their own set of rules governing intellectual property, that it would have been impossible to open-source enough of the project to be of any benefit to anyone.
For the parts I worked on, compiling in "copyrights.c" would sometimes double the size of the object.
I've been working in the government funded software research and development community for a decade and I must have seen as much as $50 million or more of the Public's dollars go into the giant black hole of software research.
One of the major problems of goverment funded research, even when it is contractually bound to be open for government-related inspection and use (which most of it is) is that the various players all jealously guard their turf. This includes other contractors who, even when legitimately approached for copies of the source which they are contractually bound to give you, curiously develop problems getting messages, getting back to you, shipping you source, and providing you access. You'd think it would end there, but no.
The government players themselves jealously guard their turf. Since there is similar and even duplicative work funded across DoD and government, government reps have no desire at all to share. They view the other similar projects as competitive and worry that if one of them gets the upper hand, their own project will be unfunded as redundant or irrelevant. This creates a situation where the government players -- those who are supposed to be working for the Public Trust -- instead drag their feet and use passive resistance in giving up software to even those who are allowed to see it, such as other members of goverment or government contractors working on the government's behalf.
The end result of all of this is that enormous sums of software gets locked up in boxes and never sees the light of day. About the only person who actively looks at the source is the original contractor. For research efforts, its understandable and reasonable that a research project doesn't result in a piece of software that's used by either no one or the very few. However, what's not not reasonable is that the information itself is effectively vaporized.
This is a completely execrable situation and grossly violates the Public Trust. Not only is the system vastly wasteful of the public dollar, it likewise violates the entire basis of public research: the open sharing of information.
For some time now, a sort of jewel in my mind's eye has been glimmering, and it goes like this:
All goverment software development, with the exception of sensitive projects, should be forced into placement under open license into a high profile source repostory such as Source Forge. This, for every government project, would be the primary CVS repository of the project. Project developers would insert code here and be subject to detailed public scrutiny with default anonymous CVS read access.
In my opinion this would blow open the doors of enormous amounts of software development and be of enormous benefit to the general public. Consider how neatly nipped in the bud all the beaureacratic foot-dragging would be. Intermediaries? None. You want the source code? CLICK.
This should be the new standard of non-classified government software development. The money belongs to the People, dammit! So should the research.
C//
Why should all public code be Open Source? First, since code is now considered speech, all Freedom of Information rules apply. This means that the code is going to have to be available anyway, unless there's some special circumstance, and that contingency is already covered above.
Secondly, there is no value to having non-open code in the public sector. When was the last time you saw NASA as the vendor, when you went to buy a flight simulator? Yet they've probably got better flight simulation code than any other organization out there. And, yes, much of it is perfectly usable in a domestic flight sim. FlightGear is a good demonstration of that.
Third, the purpose of Government R&D is to make the country more competitive and better-equipt to handle the competition of other nations. Withholding the information necessary to do that is like running in a 3-legged race, blindfold, with lead-weighted shoes, over rough terrain. Handicaps of that magnitude are not just stupid, they're economic suicide.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I am a firm believer in the principles of Free Software as advocated by Richard Stallman. HOWEVER, if software is developed with public funds, it should be available for us to use as we wish. There should be no restrictions on anyone's use of that publicly funded code - it should be in the public domain.
:)
Proprietary software obviously restricts my use of what should be public domain code; I won't belabor this point. As GPL opponents so often point out, though, the GPL also restricts your actions, in that you can't hide your improvements (unless you keep them completely to yourself). The usual (and correct) rejoinder is that if you don't want to make your work available for free, then you probably shouldn't be taking advantage of others who do. The GPL is about guaranteeing that the choice available to you is available to everyone else. If government software is GPL'd, though, then no one has a choice. You've paid your taxes, you have moral ownership of the code*, but you can't legally do with it as you wish.
Let the software become public domain. Do you want to GPL your improvements? You are free to do so. Do you want to close off your improvements? You are free to do so. Will the GPL improvements code wipe the closed source improvements off the map? I believe so, but that's a rant for another day.
*P.S. Don't come back with any stupid analogies with physical property owned or developed with public funds - the analogy doesn't hold. I can't do anything I want with public lands - but I can sell pictures I take of public lands. That's the closest analogy between physical public property and publicly developed intellectual property.
P.P.S. Smart analogies are OK
How about a different angle on the same idea: Suppose you gave public funding for research on Fusion Reactors, and a breakthrough resulted in a working design. Would you demand that you be given your own Fusion Reactor because you contributed funding?
Demanding the knowledge (designs, algorithms, theories) gained from the research is a different story, because generating knowledge is the main purpose for doing research. Contributing funding for research is an investment, not in tangible goods, but in knowledge. Not sharing this with the contributors would be cheating, but refusing to hand over source code is no more wrong than refusing to hand over a Fusion Reactor.
Fair enough, if I'm paying for it in tax I expect to own the end result. If you don't want me to then don't take my money. Very simple.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Essentially, the arguments against complain that much research couldn't happen if it had to yield open source software because it builds on non-open source software. This ignores the fact that software developed as a result of this research cannot be distributed at all, open or closed source, as it stands today. The writer's objection only applies to code which researchers do not have the license to redistribute.
The sensible thing to do, then, to address the concerns of both parties, is to mandate that any software which is developed by public funds and then distributed be distributed under an opensource license. The real concern with software developed using public funds (IMO) is that it not be used to the exclusive profit of one individual/group/corporation while being denied to others who contributed the funds. My problem isn't when the software stays in the lab. It's when citizens' tax dollars contribute to the profits of some megacorp and citizens are then unable to access the results of their contributions.
.sig: file not found
The theory with open source is that the everyone can look over it, find bugs, fix bugs, submit fixes, and the world is a happier place...
Imagine this in place in a system where the government uses/makes opensource software.
Mind you I am for this... but imagine
1) Make good application
2) Make code public
3) Person A. finds bug, reports it
4) Person B. finds a way to fix it
5) Gvnt thinks its a good idea to look over the fix first
6) rootkit released
7) (5-6 months later patch is accepted)...
Oh CHRIST - you're quite the whiner huh?
You're probably the same type of person that, when pulled over for a speeding ticket, berates the cop with "Hey! You can't do this to me - I PAY your salary!"
Guess what - some tax dollars go to develop stuff that you don't use or get benefits from. Deal with it. The american technology industry wouldn't be nearly what it is if it wasn't for the investment made by the military and/or government. Do you directly get some cash out of the deal? No. But society as a whole benefits from the advancement.
Next time you're in florida, i suggest you stop by NASA and *demand* your trip on the space shuttle. After all, you 'paid for it'.
(this argument is of course orthogonal to the one about what projects are 'appropriate' to fund. Don't try to pull us off on a tangent)
So you agree, then, that unclassified code developed as a result of government-funded research should be placed in the public domain.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
That way, it could benefit everyone. People could start their own closed-source companies with it, and thereby expand the economy. GPL projects could also arise out of public code, because there is nothing that says you can't take public domain code and start a GPL based project with it.
Most definitely, publicly funded code should remain public thereby keeping control of the code out of the hands of both greedy closed-source developers and of GPL based projects that force developers to release improvements. With public domain or BSD code, both groups could benefit.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
While I, in the long run, would like to see all code free, the really important thing for science is that the analysis is open to scrutiny. The code contains the details of this analysis, so it must be available to scrutiny. If the analysis isn't open to scrutiny, it isn't science.
However, this does not necessarily imply that it has to be Free Software or Open Source Software in the sense used by FSF or OSI. It only means that you get to see, but not touch.
While a lot of proprietary scientific software does follow this model, there is usually some code that you can't see, and I find that hard to live with. My own thesis is based entirely on free software.
If you publish all code, then the scientific requirements are taken care of, but there are other arguments that needs addressing as well, namely what serves the public and scientific advancement best. In the long run, I think Free Software does, but it'll take some time.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Seeing as most college professors are more interested in getting grants than in actually teaching students, I propose a simple solution:
If you want a grant, your results become open source. No, don't steal from "closed source," come up with your own stuff, and it has to be open source, or you're not getting any money.
If you plan on making money off of your research, you're not getting a grant. The public should not be forced to pay for your profit, no matter what "societal benefits" your getting rich may provide.
~ now you know
If they want to keep the benefits for themselves then they should be content with such funding as the FREE MARKET will provide, period. If the free market won't fund it then it can't have been worth much right? Or maybe the dominant ideology of my country is just a sham, I dunno.
They wouldn't want to be called thieves, parasites, and defrauders of the public treasury I'M SURE --Right?.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Would you demand that you be given your own Fusion Reactor because you contributed funding?
No, but I'd want to be able to build my own Fusion Reactor without having to pay any royalties of license fees on the design. Since software seems to be treated as IP rather than physical property, it would seem to fall under this sort of demand, rather than yours.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Software is not like a fusion reactor - it costs nothing to make another instance of it, for one thing. Software is, it seems to me, a lot more like the knowledge it takes to build a fusion reactor.
I guess, then, that whether or not we agree on this boils down to whether or not we see a distinction between knowledge generated and the tangible product of that knowledge. In the case of fusion reactors, I think the distinction is quite legitimate. In the case of software, I'd have to say the distinction doesn't exist.
Indeed, if the algorithms used in the software were available for public use but the source code was not, all that would be needed would be for someone to write new source code to execute the same algorithms. If the new source is functionally identical to the old, what's the possible benefit of keeping it locked up? That's why I say the distinction between the algorithms and the code is a false one - the code is just a restatement of the algorithms.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
I know the answer to this, because I spent a lot of time at a university. It's because the public funding that universities get is a pittance compared to what it costs to operate them.
This is because the citizens want guaranteed state university systems with ridiculously low tuition and high teacher/student ratio, but they don't want to pay any taxes. Somebody else should do it, and they'd better well damned do it. This absolutely requires universities and the like to make money elsewhere. They sell football tickets, and they sometimes sell software.
I don't like it, either. But if you don't like it, stop complaining about how high your taxes are and stop voting for politicians that promise to lower your taxes.
Obviously you've never read CACM, JACM, or any of the other peer-reviewed journals for software development and research.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Many times the public is only one source of funding for universities and research companies. If a particular software project received 50% of its funds from the public, what should it do then? Take out all the comments?
You could argue that public funds should not go to closed source projects in the first place, but I would argue that the government should look to fund projects that benefit the public upon completion. Any product that doesn't (or reasonably appear to) benefit the public in some way should not be funded in the first place, regardless of the benefit of releasing the project's source code.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
It's the kind of bullshit that could only come from corrupt corporations lobbying a corrupt government - it's as plain as the smirk on Dubya's face.
I am speaking as an independent.
Oh, yes. The Democrats are immune to corruption. Only Republicans have that fault.
BTW, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Reasonable price. Interested?
Views presented here are quite simplistic views of what happens at a university. Most researchers are accustomed to releasing their results into the public domain for inspection, review, and improvement -- this goes for both articles and code. Remember the articles about "opening up" research journals? Most of those in favour were the researchers themselves. Furthermore, I don't understand the argument that large companies can "dictate" what gets done with research at a university, somehow suggesting that this also extends to public funding. In general, industrial collaboration occurs under specifically worded contracts, which are usually open from the researcher's perspective -- why would a university researcher sign anything that prohibits him/her from publishing?
Besides, most often it's not some huge company locking up research, but the profs and grad students themselves who start companies based on their research (where do you think all these tech startups come from?). I fear that the knee-jerk "open the source" response would discourage university researchers from doing commercially interesting work, because it would be more difficult for them to commercialize it on their own terms. The unintended effect would probably be to drive talented researchers into commercial labs (where the source is closed anyway), or to obfuscate their code so badly so as to make it worthless.
Furthermore, how do you define "public funding"? The professor's salary is usually subsidized by the government, so is everything the professor produces to be made public? And how do you "requrire" the open release of source? Would an auditor be sent to my lab to ensure that all my source is being released, and I'm not holding anything back?
Most research has little direct commercial value, and reserchers are normally happy to release their source. Why not leave the decision up to the researcher?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
My doctoral work was funded partially by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council - a British Government funding body) and partially by SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (Now GSK). This is not unusual in British Universities, and I guess the same holds for American Universities.
If my code was to be released, would I have to work out which parts were publically funded, and which were not?
The University's IP lawyers have obviously thought about this in the past. There is a clear contract stating ownership details.
As it happens, the more useful parts of the code I developed are now released under the GPL.
1. Status quo = Only corporations benefit
2. BSD + Public Domain = Everybody can benefit
3. GPL = Only GPL users benefit
And why should the greedy corporations benefit from the public funding?
Why should a public infrastructure discriminate between a company or an individual?
I release all my work into the public domain, because I'm more interested in my work being used and available then keeping companies from profiting off it. Why shouldn't all research enjoy the priveledge to be shared with EVERYONE with no strings attached?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Andrew Dalke writes:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" -- Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
That seems to me a very clear statement that a public good--the Progress of Science--can be achieved by keeping "Writings" exclusive to the author.
This is a complete misinterpretation of the clause. If you go back to the original copyright laws -- the ones written by the authors of the Constitution, you will find that the Framers required, as a condition of copyright, that the works be published and distributed to the public in order to qualify for copyright. Works that were kept "exclusive" to the author, were ineligible for copyright. This is how patent law works -- if you want a patent, you must disclose to the public how your invention works. You cannot obtain a patent on a device, and simultaneously keep the operation of that device a secret. This is how copyright originally worked, before the 1976 rewrite.
In phrase "exclusive Right" was intended to be understood in the context of required publication. The "exclusive Right" is the right to exclude others from duplicating your invention or writing, not the keeping of writings "exclusive" to the author. The reason why the granting of exclusive rights -- the right to exclude -- was considered a tolerable evil was quite simple -- Such rights were only granted on condition of publication! The public good was that the works were published so that the public could learn from them, and from their examples, create new works! Hardly the case with the "licensed, unpublished, proprietary code" that Dalke is so fond of.
In fact, the keeping of writings exclusively to the author is exactly the problem that copyright was invented to solve!
The first copyright law covered books, charts, and maps. The inclusion of maps was no accident or afterthought. One of the problems in 18th century navigation was a lack of accurate maps. Mapmaking was a difficult, time-consuming, expensive process -- just as software development is today -- and with no way for mapmakers to protect their investments, they resorted to licensing agreements to restrict their users, just as software companies do today. With all of these secret maps, licensed restrictively to ship captains, very little progress was being made in accurate map-making. The problem was that no one could legally compare maps to each other, because all of the maps were locked up under non-disclosure agreements. Copyright was intended to change the situation by granting a monopoly over the reproduction of books, maps, and charts, in exchange for open publication of the works.
Dalke's misinterpretation turns the entire purpose of the Monopoly clause on its head. On the other hand, he can be forgiven for not understanding the purpose of copyright -- most of copyright law has been turned on its head in the last quarter century, beginning with the disasterous rewriting of the copyright code in 1976, and continuing with the disasterous decision to grant copyright protection to object code, and not requiring the publication of source code.
I have a brief analogy. Imagine that you, a young student, aspiring to become a novelist. A good teacher would tell you to read as many novels as you can by your favorite authors, because it's only by reading other people's great works, that you learn how to create your own great works. Imagine if you were told, "If you want to be a novelist, you may not read other people's novels -- that's illegal. You have two choices -- either learn to write from scratch, starting from grammar books, and moving on to short stories, and finally novels -- or alternatively, you can get a job with a book publisher which will permit you to read other people's novels, under strict non-disclosure agreements.
I don't think that such a system would result in very good novels, but that's exactly the situation with computer software. There's plenty of good and bad computer software, and millions of young computer programmers who would like nothing more then to be able to read and learn from that software, but the vast majority of it is locked up, never to be seen by more then a handful of people. Such software does NOT advance the progress of science. Science is advanced by publication, not by secrecy. Dalke's theory seems to be that things are ok, because "real" researchers like himself have access to the source code through their institutions, but for every elite, privileged researcher who has access to the source code, there are thousands of other people who do not, and are unable to contribute anything. They are locked out.
If we really wanted to improve the state of software, and everyone talks about how poor the quality of commercial software is, the first step is to require, as a condition of copyright, the publication of complete source code in conjunction with any object code. The problem is that our copyright law, particularly with respect to software, is so completely dysfunctional, that it no longer serves its purpose -- to build a public domain that others can draw from, learn, and improve upon.
The sole exception to the software copyright fiasco is the software published under the GPL. By mandating public disclosure of source code, programs published under the GPL fulfill the original purpose -- and mandate of copyright. The results validate the original purpose and design of copyright -- to promote scientific progress, by providing an openly published base of work that can be built and expanded on by others.
Good argument. I hope you are also opposed to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and every other government program you are paying for and not getting any benefit from.
Some might argue that even though I am not getting a direct benefit from these programs they do benefit society and myself indirectly. Wether or not I am getting my money's worth is certainly debatable, but bureaucracy creates overhead, and I don't really expect to get $1 in value for every $1 in taxes I pay. Taxes are not an investment, they are an *expense*.
Why does the benefit from software development have to the code? What if the developers are allowed to resell that software, but they are required to return a portion of the proceeds to the gov't to be used to fund other research? That would benefit the taxpayers by reducing our burden to pay for reasearch while at the same time making more money available to fund additional research.
This doesn't just apply to software either, losts of research is done with government grants that results in commercial viable IP. Should all of this belong to the Gov't?
Either you believe that the research itself benefits the greater good, even if someone profits from it, or you don't. If research benefits us all, then it is worth public subsidies, and we shuldn't expect to get our "investment" back directly. If it only benefits the people who directly profit they should bear all of the costs as well.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Public funds do not equate to world funds.
You have a point, though I'm not sure I agree with it. However, from a legal perspective, it's easy to fix - write a license that only permits use by citizens or inhabitants or whatever of the nation that produced it.
Profs get their reputations from publishing research results which are thought highly of by knowledgeable colleagues, and tenure, promotions, jobs at better universities, and Nobel prizes all follow
Nobel Prizes... I'll agree with that, but all of those other benefits are the direct result of pulling in the most grant money, and nothing else.
~ now you know
Are you one of those delusional libertarians who goes off about how great capitalism is and decries government intervention except when it involves transferring wealth from taxpayers to your favorite industries? I mean, come on - if the technology industries' ideas were all that shit-hot, they'd have found someone to pay for them.
And you know what, I'm not whining about not getting a ride on the space shuttle (but if you could read, you'd know that). I am griping about public funds going to make private fortunes - not through the sale of goods (I have no problem with someone getting rich selling stuff to the government, as long as the gov't shops around for a decent price) - but from licensing IP that I paid for. Knowledge paid for by the public should, generally, remain in the public's hands.
Side note: I've been to the KSC and seen the Shuttle, as well as a lot of the Delta, Atlas and Titan programs. Cool stuff. Also check out the monument to Glenn and the other Mercury astronauts, if they're letting people into that part of the complex. I encourage everyone to go down and check out what they've paid for, if they get the opportunity. (And if security restrictions ever again allow them to - I went before 9/11.)
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
If you don't want to be condescended to, then don't launch off on a rant that doesn't address a single point of the article that's being discussed. If you bothered to read it, you'd see it's largely in favor of open-source, but opposed to a specific, faulty proposal.
i still doubt you read the article "Why I'm Not Supporting the Open Informatics Petition", and honestly don't see the point in continuing a discussion with someone who's going to childishly curse at me.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Not many third parties are going to work in the public's interest. Most of them are going to work in their own interest, and if that interest ever includes taking money from a large software company they're auditing, then they'll go easy on that company. (At least until they get caught, and then they'll start distributing that wealth among Congressional campaigns.)
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
And more to the point, I would think that the ACM would take umbrage at CACM being classified as a journal of "software development and research"...! There is a LOT more in all those magazines than that.
BUT Firstly, I believe that if it's paid with public money, the code needs to be public.
However, like the article points out: There are cases where a researcher augments proprietary code, thus is unable to release the code to the public.
There should be a provision for cases like this, but this provision should be made very difficult to prevent abuse (Everybody saying thier an exception).
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Something created with entirely public funds should become public domain, not licensed under any other terms.
I'm not a GPL basher.. but I don't think the GPL is the place for it.
It should become public domain, with absolutely no restrictions attached to it whatsoever.
If someone wants to continue work and GPL it, great... their version would be GPL.
If someone wants to take it and fold it into a proprietary system, that's great too. Companies pay taxes too, you know.
If the part of his argument you were looking for me to address was the dependence on privately-developed source code, then you're barking up the wrong tree. It would be non-trivial to duplicate the functionality embodied in closed-source packages, but it would be a one-time, finite, fixed cost with immeasurable benefits to the research community and the public. It doesn't seem worth discussion.
And I cursed at you because you approached me like an asshole.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
What Mr. Dalke seems to ignore when he makes the statement against opening source code:
"I countered that the arguments in favor of the petition, like encouraging standardization and supporting incremental improvements, are not as strong as the originators' claim. Because of all these problems I see in the Open Informatics petition, I find that I cannot sign it."
Is that the originator, in this case, is being funded by public money. If I am working for a company to produce a software product, I don't have any rights to that finished product. Similarly, if you are working for the government when you develop something, everyone in the country should gain access to the work. I'm not even saying it should be GPL'd, but released straight into the public domain.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
And you can keep your little bridge - I've got my roll sunk into some serious Florida real estate. ;)
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
yes. there are actual written laws that are copyright.
a building manufacturer had to pay money just to see the text of a law concerning.. manufacturing buildings.
*cough*
he was EXTREMELY upset to see that the actual text of a public law was copyright a private company, so he posted the text of the law on a website, got sued, and lost.
this is a horriffic example of a good system gone bad.
no
In your audit process, if nobody involved is paying for the professional, why is he coming? Is the gov't paying? We might get an honest process, but we'd be paying too much for it.
And how did you know where I kept my money? ;)
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
From the OpenInformatics FAQ:
We are not proposing a specific license; only that whatever license is used provides certain minimal rights to the users of the software:
[1] The Right to View the Source Code: electronic access to the source code, without royalty.
[2] The Right to Redistribution: anyone may redistribute the work.
[3] The Right to Create Derivative Works: anyone may create (and redistribute) a derivative of the work.
[4] The Right of Ownership: the originating author or organization may retain the Copyright for commercial licensing purposes.
This primarily grows from the "open to scrutiny" requirement, although it also goes beyond it a little. [1] places it open to scrutiny, [2] allows wider distribution without burdening the University's bandwidth, [3] allows deeper scrutiny by testing changes in the source code, among other things.
Number [4] on the other hand, allows for researchers, universities, or private sources of partial funding to get the commercial rights. Distribution of source code and the right to run object code are quite separable legally -- although there is a certain practical difficulty in enforcement if a $5,000/seat commercial product can be duplicated by running a free download through gnu c. Just don't call the commercial vendor for support...
So this won't give the University as much immediate financial gain as keeping the source secret might, but it allows some, and a U's two MAIN goals are supposed to be educating students and advancing knowledge; staying solvent is just a means to those ends. Open source (in the generic sense) certainly advances knowledge a lot better than secret source. In the long run, open-sourcing might even speed new developments enough to balance out the reduced payoff per development.
Finally, when the best available starting point for a research project was proprietary code, this arrangement would give the researcher some chance of getting permission to publish the partly-his, partly-theirs code while leaving the ownership with the original proprietor.
You don't have any choice in paying your taxes. Using money forcibly expropriated* by the government for such activities violates the rights of those who earned the money in the first place.
* The governemnt ultimately uses force -- by putting you in jail or shooting at you if you resist -- if you don't pay your taxes.
Wait... Granted, it may be due to a lack of full explanation, but your argument makes no sense to me.
Are you suggesting that if the results of research are directly commercialized and sold this would mean less burden to taxpayers? how is having to pay for the results of research you payed to have done less of a burden?
And how is the argument that a company would capitalize on the effort even applicable? I know I don't care if the profit from it -- I just don't want them to make it closed.
The enemies of Democracy are
In your hypothetical example (and especially your example, since it involves information security), it would be pointless NOT to divulge the source code, and might actually improve the implementation if many eyes were able to look at the reference implementation.
Anyway, now we're down to splitting hairs. It seems like we agree more than we disagree, I'm just more extreme about valuing transparency in the work done.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
But what about the projects that are 50% private money and 50% public? What about projects that are all public money, but all private facilities and hardware? What about projects where the ideas and supervision come from the private sector?
I don't know of a general rule that covers all these situtations. If one said, "if it has $0.01 of public money, it has to be BSDed or GPLed" I know that there would be significantly less money available and that in turn means less support for graduate students and hence fewer graduate students.
So this is a case by case deal. You don't have to like it. It is just the realities of modern universities that a big chunk of their money comes from non-public sources.
-- Multics
I think you and I agree more than we disagree. I have no beef with publicly-funded research in general, and am quite capable of seeing the larger, indirect benefits of Social Security, Medicare, public education, needle exchanges, etc.
And that's what I'm saying. I also take it a step further and say that tax-funded IP should not be used to line anyone's pockets in the form of licensing fees. Do I mind paying researcher's salaries? Not at all. Paying for finished goods of one sort or another? No problem.
But paying for a patent or a piece of copyrighted code that someone gets to charge licensing fees for? We gotta talk.
The idea that the process can somehow be closed and yet the public may be somehow assured that they're not being stolen from is specious at best. Opening source, even under terms that don't allow for it's use, allow for sufficient transparency that the people may be assured their interests are being taken care of.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
This takes a few paragraphs to become relevant, so stay with me...
Recently, I've been involved with submission of an SBIR (Small Business Inovation Research) proposal, in which the Gov. gives small companies money to do research - the idea being to help create innovation - the big boys (companies over 500? people) are not elligible to get the funding.
Beauty. The interesting part is that companies who get the funding get rights to any patents as a result of the research, with the proviso that the Gov. gets to use the technology royalty free.
And as Lessig has pointed out, patents were also originally intended to help spur innovation, by giving the inventor and incentive to invent.
Also, seems to me like a lot of people end up sitting on patents - they never intend to produce the thing. I'm not sure how much of a wacked out conspiracy theory it is, but I've heard urban legends of the oil companies buying patents/rights to energy saving devices, never intending to make the device. Regardless of the truth, you can see the logic.
Back to the SBIR: So the good part is the Gov. gets rights to the results of the public money. Yea. And the underdog business gets a foot in the door. Yea.
But what if nothing is done with the patent? Or the rights are sold to one of the big boys, for a sort of denial of service attack in the patent world.
I think the patent should be reverted to the public domain (no royalties for anyone) if steps to develop the product/idea have not been taken within 1 year (in addition to the other current patent time restrictions).
Relevancy:
Why not apply the same thing to software? Gov agency's get the code for free, to diminish inter-agency rivalry. And if a private company/person/etc developed the code under a Gov. contract, they get patent style rights to it - a few years of proprietary code, which must eventually be released to the public. And if there is no active development on a commerical product (keep in mind a product aimed at being sold back to the government probably counts), then the time to release into the public domain is even sooner.
In many states, the money from the goverment for PBS mostly just keeps the transmitters running. When a PBS station wants to produce original content, they may get a goverment grant, but odds are that it will only cover a fraction of the cost. So, either the producing station applies for grants from corporations or foundations, or the station funds it with its own money (which it is probably hoping to make back in direct sales to schools or consumers, and licensing it for broadcast on other PBS stations.) If PBS were 100% government funded, then it would be possible to give assets away, but since money is always sparse, they feel they have to charge. Also, don't forget that some of the original PBS content isn't even produced by PBS stations, it's produced by private production companies and sold to PBS. Some stations create no content at all.
What your tax money is really paying for is a television signal to almost every home. PBS reaches something like 98% of homes. I believe the other networks are somewhere in the 80%'s and cable is in the 70%'s.
Would this mean that all the source for software the NSA and CIA have been using would be made public?
:-)
Now that would be something I'd like to see...
This is only an ambiguous issue to people who think Microsoft EULAs are handed down from God.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I got the impression you were accusing President Bush of corruption (probably about Enron) out of spite: it's as plain as the smirk on Dubya's face. It just sounded like an opposing political party.
;)
Personally, I am fed up with people attacking other people instead of trying to work things out.
As for political parties, I think they should be banned. I bet I sell my bridge before they do that.
The question is a real nobrainer to answer.
If there is an issue of which license to use, thenit should be such a license that in the public paid for state it is usable in both GPL
and proprietary manners. But the code sate as paid for by the public remains public in that state.
Should it be altered and the GPL applied to the altered state, then the altered state onward is under the GPL. But should it be altered under proprietary control, then that version/fork remains proprietary so long as the holder of the alterations wants it to be.
Public spending so to benefit both individuals and business, for both of these things are want makes up the society for which public money (taxes) is collected and used.
It really is a no brainer for anyone but those looking for a free ride.
http://www.nyfairuse.org/law_is_copyrighted.xhtml1 b.asp
http://www.thompsonhine.com/news/nl/ebus_march200
Not too long ago we had another story on these lines and I posted my opinion. When I reached the first argument raised by dalke against public code my repost was straight to fingers so here I am.
Prove it! Especially from a public funded university venture! As always money can buy money (advertising buys income) but generating real revenue from software is extremely tricky (.bomb). If he specified an exact license and copy-protection scheme he may have had an argument, but only if his product has a unique quality that is quite globally beneficial within a field. In case I need explain my argument here, he should have tried to get away with I want to experiment with a modification to the algorithm used for working with databases of the secondary structure of proteins (if thats what it is, he never said) and DSSP is the only database/tool used then he could have an argument, but ONLY if you accept that non-free Open Source is as good as Free software. Yep, it most certainly does! The result of the work would be a public built and understood system (however long it takes) which can be used by anyone, anywhere and they can offer their work back into it. Take his Secondary Proteins. Could the algorithm not be examined as an entity instead of as a piece of DSSP? Could you not objectify it out? Could that work be used by others to start building a free replacement? Could he just have written it for a hypothetical system and ported out the information he needed to fill the gaps from DSSP for any demo/testing (as the first Free compiler must have been compiled by a non-free compiler unless they were madThis is the nub of the argument, I say that public money should not be used to buy private money but used to fund the social purpose of learning, dalke says if it could make money it should be allowed. This is a truly american atitude (not to say it does not exist elsewhere, but it is an american creation) in that while most other societies would have seen the choice as public or private, now a choice for surrupticiously funding your economy by subsidising private ventures is quite acceptable, why? Allowing the university to sell itself is fine, but allowing it to fund what it sells with public money AND stop people from distributing it serves purely capitalistic purposes and not the greater good (and if you want to believe that capitalism is more important than greater good thats your bag not mine).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
The primary reason for this was to allow the researchers a chance to examine the data, write reports and so forth, essentially, get a return on the huge investment in time and resources each institution has to make to "buy" time on telescopes. Essentially, it keeps the motivation for those researchers. Importantly, as the data IS publicly funded, it does find its way into the public domain, as it should.
Perhaps a similar approach could be used here?
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Even ``morphological'' studies are no longer done with magnifying glasses and film, but rather with large collections of digital images from spacecraft such as SOHO and TRACE. Image calibration and reduction software is mandatory if one is to do meaningful experimental analysis.
Fortunately, the solar community has by-and-large been good about releasing analysis tools into the public domain -- in fact, there's a homebrew distribution system that grew up, mostly before CVS, to nearly-universal status within the research community. Without the tools that are available via solarsoft, I literally could not do the work that I do without developing similar things myself (in fact, I do develop tools myself, and publish them... but that's another story)
Even within the relatively open solar community, there are software-based barriers to entry. For example, most of the current community develops in a proprietary language called IDL, which was developed in significant part (in its early years) with public funds. The developer, David Stern, started RSI, inc. to capitalize on his language. Currently, IDL licenses start at $1,000 per year, double the current cost of an entry-level workstation.
When workstations cost $10,000 and only large organizations could afford hardware capable of doing image processing, this cost was excusable. But now, in an era of cheap computers, high connectivity, and readily available space-borne solar data, the cost of supporting IDL is the main barrier preventing hobbyists, high school students, and interested amateurs from doing their own research programs. If IDL were open-source and free, RSI might well still exist (under the Cygnus / Red-Hat business model), and solar (and other) research would be much more accessible to the masses.
One may argue that IDL (and its competing product, MatLab) wouldn't have developed into the large, powerful packages that they are without commercialization. But such arguments are spurious: PDL, the Perl Data Language, is entirely open-source and free, and powerful enough that that I am now devloping tools in it instead of in IDL.
I signed the petition, and I encourage you to, too. Publicly funded intellectual property is your property, just as the national forests are your forests. Demand them.
The better question is, should public funds be used to finance research to be used by a private company?
The answer to that is absolutely not. Remember though, that a lot of publicly funded research is related to the Department of Defense. Making code that may eventually become part of a classified system GPL'd is obviously a bad idea.
It is odd though, because if I write software, then the copyright is owned by my employer. Since we, the taxpayers, are the employers of public researchers, the copyright for their work should belong to the taxpayers.
So, I guess all results of publicly funded research should be copyrighted in the public domain.
Of course, what is then the incentive for an individual to pursue research at all?
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
True, and this is why it is so important to publish the code. It really doesn't help you anything if the math is correct but the implementation of it is flawed. And even less if the math is correct when dealing with usual arithmetic, but wrong when you're dealing with the almost always approximate answers you get from a computer due to the discrete nature of computer arithmetics.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I agree, except for:
Closed source != revenue
Open source != !revenue
Making money off the results so less tax money need be used is a fine idea, but not at the cost of restricting the freedoms of those who orginaly funded the research.
The enemies of Democracy are
The thing is, I think that to do that properly is going to take opening the source for projects that generate software.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Ditto on the answer to political parties. Of course, there are the matters of freedom of speech and association... But that doesn't make the herd mentality less loathsome.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
What is being talked about is whether, when knowledge is generated with public funding, to whom the benefits of that knowledge accrues.
So no, I don't think I have a right to grab pencils and Post-It Notes from the FBI office down the street. I do think that when I pay (directly or through an intermediary) for something to be discovered, and that knowledge goes into private hands to enrich someone else, that I've been stolen from.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
But I'll bite.
Yes, if I paid a bunch of researchers to invent and build a (real physical) fusion reactor for me, I'd consider it mine. If I just invested in creating a design, and they come up with a design, I'd want it, blueprints and all.
That's at least how I'd consider it if I was a business funding a research project. But if the employer is "the public" I guess it's alright for the employees to keep the research to themselves and try to make a buck of it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That is a disingenuous analogy, sir.
Any person, even those unfamiliar with fusion research, are likely to conceive of a working fusion reactor as being an extremely difficult and expensive thing to build. Your intent was to have the reader through analogy associate the obvious absurdity of distributing fusion reactors with releasing source code.
I respond to this with an equal absurdity -- if Fusion Reactors could be reproduced and shipped directly into my home at negligible cost then yes I would in fact expect one. But the absurdity here is that it is inconceivable that fusion reactors could be made (and shipped!) at zero cost.
As others have responded, a more apt analogy would be the blueprints for the fusion reactor, which i could reasonably expect.
Source is knowledge. It is a blueprint. A product is a compiled binary (which still isn't a fusion reactor).
The enemies of Democracy are
You imply that it's possible to create something without someone owning it. In the end, everything is owned by somebody. Whether it be an individual, a corporation, or a state, everything belongs to someone.
Owning something implies that the party exercises exclusive control over that something. When EVERYBODY owns something (public domain), does it really fcsking matter anymore?
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
You decided to recycle the reason for having patents and copyrights to apply to this argument. There's a reason for that argument, which you seemed to miss, and that is to allow Authors and Inventors to recoup thier time and money creating said Art, thus to encourage artists and inventors to SHARE thier discoveries.
In OUR scenerio, where the PUBLIC FUNDS our Artist/Inventor. There is nothing to recoup. Or, atleast the original funder isn't recouped (you and me)...
Whether funded by the US Government, Bayer, Sony, or Mama Cass, the innovations belong to the individuals who discover/develop them. If the innovators want to license their developments to other corporations, that's their decision.
This is true... What we're advocating is that the US Government should be limited to give funding to individuals who will not retain the intellectual rights, but rather release it into the public domain. This is perfectly normal, legal, constitutional, and WAS very much common practice before the Bayh-Dole Act.
Lastly, Think about the implications of publicly funded technology ending up in the public domain. This means it commercialized and expanded on by ANY company, which from what I understand creates COMPETITION, which I also understand is a KEY mechanism in a prosperous capitalistic society?
You need to relearn your capitalism...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I really like where you went with your argument. I agree and think the example of the mapmaker is a good analogy to software development.
It's this time of discussion that can really lead to some good progress in this area. I would like to see the source code to software available as well, such that I can fix it myself if needed and so forth.
You do bring up the GPL but while it does fulfill one of these purposes, it does not fulfill the larger goal of copyright. That is, it does not protect the producer of the software, not without combining it with dual licensing which kind of defeats the purpose of such a discussion.
What I'd like to see is software distributed in a fashion that if I buy a copy I can obtain the source code. I find that very appealing and very useful.
However, to protect the creator of the software there must still be limitations. But I envision those limitations as being similar to other copyrighted works today, like books, maps, pictures, etc. You cannot redistribute the software to others who have not bought it. You may transfer the license that you bought, but you cannot retain a copy when you do so. You must buy a copy for each person who will be using the software. etc.
I also believe the length of time a copyright lasts needs to be altered. It is too long today, well beyond what one would call a limited time.
Useful change to copyright can be accomplished without completely abandoning it and the purposes it should serve.
"As GPL opponents so often point out, though, the GPL also restricts your actions, in that you can't hide your improvements (unless you keep them completely to yourself)."
I don't believe that is the most damaging clause of the GPL, but rather the one that states that you may freely redistribute the software. That's the anti-business clause of the GPL.
How about a different angle on the same idea: Suppose you gave public funding for research on Fusion Reactors, and a breakthrough resulted in a working design. Would you demand that you be given your own Fusion Reactor because you contributed funding?
Does the Fusion Reactor require no cost, time or effort to re-create and can be sent to me over the phone line? Hell yes, I expect to get one!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Excellent point and one that I should have made.
I have some pictures I took of the Grand Canyon. Would you like to buy them? I own the copyright on them. They are for sale. They are pictures I took on public land. I can't sell the land, but I can sell intellectual property I derived from the land.
:)
This is really all I meant to imply. I bow to your clearly superior knowledge of commercial filming and scientific research on National Park Service property. I likely should have simply stopped after " - the analogy doesn't hold."
The articles are not talking about simply the results of publicly funded research. I agree that the results of publicly funded research, be they new drugs, funky mathematical algorithms, etc should be released into the public domain. Not copyrighted. The public at large funded the research and so the public should have access to the results to do with as they will. This includes selling stuff based on the research, and doesn't exclude the team that created it.
But that's not what the articles were getting at. They were talking about the tools used internally to get those results. A lot of those tools are proprietary though some have the good old "free for private or non-commercial use" clause in them. It also covers modifications to those bits of software that are kept purely internal.
There is nothing wrong with that, since these are merely tools used to make getting the research results easier. What you're paying for is not a little tweak to the tools your research team have made, but the actual deliverable which is the purpose of the research.
I operate exactly the same way in the real commercial world. When I do a gig for a client, they get the deliverables. A configured system, doco, maybe a specific program. They don't get copies of all my funky helper scripts that I use to get the job done. They don't get a copy of my .muttrc file because I sent project related email. They don't get my perl script that automatically uploads the newest versions of config files via ssh. That's not what they've paid me for.
So at the end of the day, making all tools used by publicly funded research GPL is not what people really mean. What they really mean is to have the results of publicly funded research be made public.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you.
This is a rather complex issue because there are many people who are "paying" to create software at Universities...(1) The students pay, as some of their tuition money must go to software development at the university (2) Businesses pay, as they often donate money to such projects (3) The public pays, as our tax dollars go to university grants (4) The researchers "pay" by putting in large amounts of time. Now, that I've said "who pays", let me try to classify in what order (that is, who pays the most in the typical situation):
1st: I believe it's clear that the researchers contribute the most to these projects, as they put in their own time.
2nd: I believe after the researchers, businesses contribute the most.
3rd/4th: After businesses, clearly the university students (NOT the university) who pay the most. In many universities, the yearly tuition comes up to 20,000+ dollars a year. Multiply that by thousands of students.
4th/3rd: After students, I think the public contributes the remainder. Note, the public may contribute *more* than students, because the public contributes to many student grants, not to mention putting the students through high school.
So, now I've identified the orders of interests. So what does that mean? What should each party get for his/her/their interest in it? How can we do this while satisfying the interests of all parties?
To satisfy the researchers interest -- the researcher should be able to publish the code under a non-free license for a limited time: just enough time to allow him to make a reasonable profit considering his/her efforts (pehaps 1 or 2 years). However, he should not be able to choose the license at his will, and certainly shouldn't have the EULA option. Researchers should only be able to publish under the least restrictive license which still gives them the possibility of profit. Some critical parts of the program should be public-domain from the start, so they can be reviewed. As for the rest of the license, it should be something which does not prohibit reverse-engineering, nor does it take away end-users rights to modify it on their system, or to distribute modifications: a license like the one Quake is released under, which is very liberal.
To satisfy the business' interest (for the businesses w/c contributed to the project), they should have full access to free use of the program, as well as source code. Additionally, 1-2 years after the initial release, businesses should have the right to make modifications and sell such under the license of their choice. Should the original investor choose to release under a license like the GPL, the business would be granted an excpetion, and would be able to treat it as if a BSD license.
To satisfy the students interest. Students should get free use of the program, as well as access to the source code, so they can make any modifications they want. They get the same deal businesses get, minus the option to modify and sell 1-2 years after the initial release. Furthermore, before 1-2 years, they should have the right to release source-code additions (but not modifications). If they make modifications, they should have to release them as binaries...they may release the source code for their modifications after the "inventors" 1-2 year license expires.
To satisfy the public's interest. Of course, the government has full access to the software, free of charge. After the 1-2 year profit-making deal given the original inventor, the work falls into public domain. Should the businesses have made modifications on that original work and sold them, the modified parts are not affected, but the non-modified parts must be public-domained.
The ultimate payback the public gets for supporting inventors little projects is to have public-domain access. The more involved the public (i.e., citizen taxdollars) are, the quicker that should come. In the case of typical software, where the public does not "donate" but does support it by paying to enforce draconian IP laws (w/c, btw, should be scaled back), the public doesn't get access soon enough [20 years for patents, life + 70 and (probably eternity, if they keep on extending it) for copyrights). For things where the public is only involved in that it protects IP, it should get public-domain access in at least 10 years.
Note, this also applies for GPLed and BSDed (free) software. The public pays to support GPLed and BSDed software by enforcing the terms of those contracts. Thus, after 10 years, the original work that was GPLed (but not the modifications) needs to fall into the public domain. The modifications should fall into public domain 10 years after their publication.
Personally, I like GPL and BSD better than public domain. But as the public does pay for GPL/BSD licenses by enforcing the terms of their contracts, even things covered under them should -- by logic -- eventually have to fall under the public domain.
Remember, an ideal world is a world where there is no intellectual property at all. GPL and BSD licenses are just a way help liberate information in a world where there is intellectual property.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Research based on proprietary technology would have to be rebuild-- the wheel would be re-invented costing the public far more in the short run.
I think that where possible the works should be open source (ideally something like the BSD license, but the GPL is better than selling it to a company...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think you need to reconsider the original intent of the copyright clause in the Constitution.
No you don't, the intent is explicitly mentioned!
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
Don't go try looking for other reasons, such as protecting the artists, because you are merely contradicting the explicitly stated intent here.
Promoting Science and Useful Arts is not done by secretly holding code, but by publicising the source for others to learn from so that new ideas emerge, and Science and Useful arts progress.
As your claim's basis is in direct contradiction with explicit content from the constitution, your entire post is rendered invalid.
The point which you glossed over is that although information (photographs, code, schematics, CAD drawings for a Ferrari) costs virtually nothing to transfer/store, the resources to initially create this information ARE scare. Even if all the programmers, engineers, and musicians of the world were willing to work for free, there would still be a scarcity because there is a finite number of these people, and the work takes time.
As you point out, some day the cost of "copying" any tangible object, even a space shuttle, will be virtually insignificant. Who will design all these products that cost nothing to produce? Presumably, there won't be much point in paying anyone, since everything (except living space, I suppose) will be free. Would talented people just do it for fun/prestige? The OSS movement has demonstrated that it works, at least within the scope of software development. However, I don't think a ccouple o guys with a HandyCam could film the next Titanic.
If you have faith in your vision, then you should have no problem with allowing the creators of "intellectual property" to set their own price for the information they produce. When the MARKET decides that their effort is no longer worth paying for, these people will disappear (as is clearly the trend for the RIAA).
Everything happens in cycles. If the software industry, the RIAA, and Hollywood are unable to adapt, they will be wiped out and the production of high-budget information will practically cease. In time however, the demand for such material will inevitably find some way to provide for these industries again.
Unfortunately you take the quote out of context.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Taken out of context it would appear to mean that. Remmeber that this is a document designed to protect the people of the United States. Of course protection must be given to science in general (for the benefit of the public), and in order to do this it grants individuals further rights.
When referring to what the "spirit" of this argument is, one must consider the ENTIRE context. The entire context makes it clear that this document's point is to secure liberaties of the individual. Perhaps a more clear way to put it would be: "Because we want to secure science and art, we grant another individual liberty."
Favoring the rights of the public over the rights of the individual sounds like communism, not something the United States has ever embraced as an idea.
One of the few really good arguments for the GPL is, in my opinion, that it counters the trends of universities selling their works to major corporations. Although I am generally in favor of both the GPL and BSD-style licenses, this is one area where the GPL is stronger. For example, if Linux was not licensed under the GPL, would some of the modifications have been sold to corporations for profit, probably patented? We may never know, but given the trends in biotechnology research in universities, it is food for thought.
(I am NOT against the BSD license-- actually, one can see how BSD licenses can be used to comjoditize the market to the point where proprietary products cannot compete-- see Apache as such a product, but that is irrelevent here.)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
There is no individual right concerned in this issue at all, except the right to replicate others' work. This right is taken away by this copyright law, in order to progress science and arts - so you see the US constitution does embrace the stance of progressing science and arts over individual rights.
As for the "right" to secretly hold your creation, this issue was addressed well by the root of the thread. Either you copyright your idea (and disclose its details), or you do not get to copyright it. This is exactly what copyright is all about.
Also there is no more 'inherent' piracy if you distribute sources and not binaries, you're merely enabling the buyers of software to learn from it, and thus promote science and arts.
I don't really see what is your point with the analogy to communism. If the constitution was about the rights of the individual only, in such a narrow perspective, it would define anarchy.
Actually, I was thinking about an idea like this just a few weeks ago. Most government documents are distributed electronically as PDF files (in addition to physical distribution). The latest version of Acrobat includes JavaScript functionality (IIRC), and I know it has some basic math functionality. It seems to me that tax forms would be prime candidates for inclusion of formulae and functions; if not the full IRS 1040A, then at least the 1040 EZ, and perhaps some of the other simpler schedules. Such a system could aid everybody--taxpayers and the IRS, who would not need to spend so much time checking for errors (I know they do it, last year they caught an error on my taxes that resulted in a $200+ refund).
Actually, I wish they would make more of their forms a little bit more functional. All of the forms I've seen appear to be simply scans of the paper copies. Acrobat provides for the ability to create fields, which can be filled out on the form, so that it may be printed out complete, instead of having to print it out, then put it in a typewriter and fill it out. For example, I work for the aviation department of a major university. FAA Form 8710 is the application for a pilot certificate. That form is distributed electronically, in PDF form; it can be downloaded and printed out, but only in the blank form. Several months ago, I created for our use a copy of that form with proper fields, so that the form may be filled out before printing, then printed out complete. This has saved our secretary significant effort--she no longer has to worry about the typewriter, lining things up, etc. I estimate that, over the course of the past six months, and three hundred or so applications, she has probably saved a dozen or more hours of unnecessary work; I "finished" the PDF in approximately six hours; that may seem high, but there are approximately 150 fields on that form, of various types, and it was my first time using Acrobat. Somebody competent could probably have done it in an hour. Also remember that the government has a mandate to reduce the onerous burden of such paperwork: the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.
Anyhow, it seems to me that most of the government forms distributed as PDF's are not even remotely taking advantage of the capabilities of the Portable Document Format, and that, on tax forms in particular, the government is falling behind the power curve in complying with the Paperwork Reduction Act, as well as good form. Just a suggestion, guys.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; - US Constitution article I, section 8, clause 8"
he claims that this is a clear statement that a public good - the progress of science - can be acheived by keeping writings (in this case: code) exclusive to the author.
huh? since when has that clause been appropriate? certianly not since copyright was bought out by disney to last indefinately. certianly not since the patent office began issuing vague software and business method patents. his argument rests on broken foundations. the us constitution is not a great foundation (its just the lesser evil compares to most other countries')
I can't agree with your statement on software obviosuly being pirated more if games shipped with source.
.0001% of game buyers willing to go through the bother of compiling a whole game certainly wouldn't hurt sales. Worried about someone compiling and releasing a binary of the game elsewhere? I though we already covered under piracy that anyone who wants one can get a copy of the ORIGINAL game, tested and virus-free (probably, of course it is Warez....).
Think of it this way - take your statement that there is "massive piracy" today. I'd agree, and in fact agree so wholeheartedly that I have to ask you: If someone wants a pirated copy of a game today, can they not get one easily? In fact the only way it would be easier to pirate games is if they shipped to your door on AOL CD's. Thus, how could ppiracy increase by releasing source?
Next consider a company releasing source for a product on thier website, but selling binaries and disallowing anyone else to distribute binaries. How would that hurt sales? The
Of course where a company might loose out is that other companies would download and use the engine without paying them for it. On ther other hand, it might lead to a larger community around your product, and also get a few more people into game programming which is good for industry as a whole. I'll bet a lot of people have benefitted from the release of Quake and Quake II code to the public at large.
ID probably has the perfect balance between OS and a commercial company that can still make money on engines.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Suppose the petition is in place and I want to experiment with a modification to the DSSP algorithm. ... The easiest way to do that is to get the DSSP source code and make the needed changes. The new code almost certainly contains parts of the old code, so under the DSSP license it cannot be redistributed. This means I cannot release the software under an open source license, and so I cannot do this research under a publicly funded grant. Either I find a private grant, rewrite DSSP completely, or simply not do that science. In any case, it hinders my research.
He makes it sound like the only hindrance that happens is in the petition world, but the whole problem is that the publically funded/closed source research allows this secondary problem to continue.
Either private actors would step in, or the DSSP people would release their code under a more liberal license so public money could be used in projects where it was useful. It's that simple.
If there were a push for openness, the patented algorithm would more obviously be the only *remaining* hindrance.
It's like saying "we can't remove this first barricade because the second one is still standing, so you'll continue having to fly a helicopter over this stretch of road." Good for helicopter rental companies, bad for science.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
You completely miss the point of the original poster. You suggest that making source code available will make a program more likely to be pirated. How?
I burn a copy of a Windows CD which contains no source code.
I burn a copy of a Windows CD which contains the full source code.
How is the latter worse than the former? How does the latter increase the losses to the publisher?
The suggestion is NOT that the publisher make source code available FOR FREE TO EVERYONE. The suggestion is that if you buy a copy of the binary, you receive also a copy of the source code. This makes the software neither more nor less piratable. Reverse engineering is a different issue.
Note that the first amendment conflicts with copyright. Your artist's rights to prevent me from publishing text is a violation of my right to freedom of the press.
Argument by analogy is a logical fallacy...One word: communism.
Straw man is also a logical fallacy.
I'd give you an F if you turned this in in my class...
1)Fair
2)That's not really code, is it? Unless they are using Rule Buider TM.
3)Fair enough, you can't think of everything.
4)ALARM! This is not what your tax dollars should be supporting! This is the whole problem and what most of us are resentful over. I'm not giving research money to my competitors.
5)This again is not code.
6)This agian is not code.
7)This again is not code.
8)This again is not code.
9)This again is not code.
So the only thing the federal government is not allowed to tell us are matters of national security, and private information that regulating common resources (banks, oil wells) requires them to be trusted with. It looks like all code not used for military purposes is fair game, unless we invent stupid laws to defeat ourselves.
The whole notion of not disclosing your code is stupid and greedy. If you want to be a software firm, do it, and good freaking luck. If you want to be a researcher, you had better come clean with your methods. If you have developed some codes that you want to use, but don't want to make free (that's not what research is all about), OK, but you had better make coppies available so that others can repeat your results and prove it works. But don't try to milk the public to develop private code. Fill up your time as you pleas, but don't put code you have not intention of sharing in your grant.
Sorry for the rant folks, I'm not in a good mood.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I agree. There has been so many times when I just wonder how to do something. Usually it's something quite simple, like say automating the configuration of some feature.
This is already the law with respect to all copyrighted works, including computer programs.
Agreed, although I believe that interpretation has been lost. It certainly has amongst the GPL crowd who now feel that they should have an inherent right to copy and redistribute without limits.
If you own a book, you have the right to read it, regardless of whether you bought the book from the publisher, borrowed it from the library, or bought it on eBay.
Agreed, although to clarify if you have a book only one person can read it at a time. I was primarily thinking of selling to corporations who have multiple people utilizing it at once. Actually even in homes, if you have multiple computers and the two children both want to play the same game... you need two copies. It'd be the same with any other game, book, music, video whatever. Unless they are willing to share and play the one copy together.
Most software is packaged on distribution CDs, so the physical-copy copyright model remains valid and functional.
Except these concepts don't apply as well to software which is downloaded off the Internet, which is becoming more and more common. Honestly I don't like it, as I'd rather have a physical CD, but you don't have much choice these days.
Agreed. I'd go so far as to say that useful change to copyright can best be accomplished by returning to the purposes that it was designed to serve.
Absolutely. It's unfortunate, however, that such enlightened opinions generally get lost in the noise that is slashdot.org. :-)
As only source code can be GPL'd, then of COURSE you have to give a copy to someone in order to give it to them under GPL.. not sure what your point is.
Who is talking about claiming to release software without releasing anything?
THe previous post made it sound like the author of code is bound by the terms of the GPL.. he is not.. the GPL specifies nothing in terms of obligations of the original author.
Thanks for your posting. Very informative and well written. I had never heard of the notion of exclusive rights implying the obligation to publish. Makes a lot of sense.
A work in the public domain can be copied freely by anyone. Such works include those of the U.S. Government and works for which the copyright has expired.
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/library/faq.html
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
AFAIK, the main reason expensive equipment isn't made open for anyone to use is that it usually already has a full schedule for research. But a software tool can be made open to the public and the researchers can still do their job. There is also the added advantage of external bug fixes.
I think this kind of open code would really speed science along, due to reduced duplicated effort. If there is private source that can't be opened up because it's from a third party then don't release that code. Obviously it won't work with out the closed library but it can still be learned from.
Can you give an example? I know of several companies who donated PCs to the department where I studied CS, but there was certainly no such restriction on the department as a result. Actually, one of the department's staff quipped in his first lecture that while MS would like to think it was in partnership with the department, the department didn't necessarily share that view.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I think very few people here have actually stopped and thought about this, read the arguments cited, or formed any sort of informed opinion, before posting. It's interesting to note that the arguments from those here with experience in research labs are vastly better informed and reasoned than the average.
First of all, can we stop being so US-centric, please? Most of you are associating "public" money (as funded by a particular government to a particular organisation) with "public" results (as in, open to everyone, everywhere). For most of you, your taxes did not pay for research done where I was studying, because I'm in a different country to most of you. Why should your world-bashing corporations get the benefit from my tax money?
BTW, here in the UK, academics are generally pretty open with their findings to anyone who's interested. I have had interesting and informative conversations with people who wouldn't no me from Adam, except that I shared an interest in their area of research. After all, most went into that research area because it interests them, too. I've had all sorts of source code, algorithms and such sent to me from many sources, just by asking. So the whole argument about things being restricted and the whole world being commercialised is just FUD, I'm afraid. Just because it's not widely published and/or advertised doesn't mean it's not available to those with a legitimate interest.
The people who've pointed out that the majority of academic research is not entirely, or even mostly, public-funded are also spot on. There are many people with vested interests, and any sort of completely open result is only ever going to be practical with completely open input (i.e., equal contributions from everyone, everywhere). Clearly that doesn't happen in practice.
Finally, what's GPL got to do with this? I can see arguments on merit for releasing openly funded material openly, though I happen to feel that they're outweighed for the reasons above. However, I see no justification whatsoever for releasing the results under some arbitrary licence that some people just happen to like, when that licence itself imposes restrictions on others.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"So the only thing the federal government is not allowed to tell us are matters of national security"
Which conveniently covers anything they want to pull out of their ass that day. "National security" is a crock. In a democracy the *people* are the national security.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
YHBT
I thought I understood trolling when I was younger, but I didn't really seem to understand your form. You see, when I trolled it was utter nonsense, and anybody getting truely riled up by it looked like an idiot.
Minus the "I'm the tasty treat nobody can resists" (I should have known picked it up from there) it seems like you're form of trolling offers some purpose as people are often presented with arguments like the one you presented with failed logic.
It's almost like you're turning Slashdot into a game where you present a flawed, but somewhat believable argument, and the rest of us are aiming to refute it as concisely and quickly as possible, without sounding like your blowing too much hot air. Pretty clever...
...OR...
Is your troll the kind that teaches us to ignore stupid posts? (Hence, the THWACK)
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Should there be anything in my \tmp directory when I first install?
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.