George Soros Funds Open-Publishing Software

blair1q writes "BBC has a story reporting that George Soros and his Open Society Institute are funding "open access" media for scientific publishing. These outlets will compete with the quasi-monopolies held by the journal industry and provide information to researchers whose institutions can't afford to subscribe to large numbers of overpriced periodicals. Part of the funding will go to improve the open-access enabling EPrints software, which is under GPL."

Comments

Cool... Can he do it for music?

[FFFish]

Ah, if only we mere mortals could get George's ear for a few hours, and explain how he could actually profit by supporting open music distribution.

To wit:
- users must open an account at the music distribution site.
- users must keep a balance of >$50 in their account in order to continue purchasing music.
- music costs $0.50 per track.
- artists are paid when they collect $1000 in payments or once a month, whichever is less frequent, no interest paid on the account (rather, the distribution site keeps any interest the money earns).
- the distribution site skims 5% of the transaction.
- for an additional percentage, the site will support automatic payment distribution, such that everyone the musician owes money to gets a percentage of the take (rather than the musician having to do that accounting him/herself.)

I think this would be a moderately profitable business. The key to success is to not be greedy: the only thing keeping micropayments from working is greed.

And George has the bucks to fund the startup. He wouldn't make a shitload of profit, but it wouldn't be unprofitable. He'd have to do it out of a desire for legacy, not to increase his fortunes.

Extra Time On Earth

[Mannerism]

Hmmm, according to that Salon article, Bill got here 4 years before he was "born". This could explain a lot...