Open Source... Mining?

farrellj writes "In mining, geophysical data is the "source code" of the industry, and is usually guarded as closely as Microsoft guards their source code for their programs, sometimes even more so. But one Canadian mining company opened up their data, and reaped the rewards of Open Source in higher profits. Read all about it at: FastCompany. NOTE: Originally seen on Linux Today."

Comments

Good PR Prospects

[Alien54]

Although the prize money, which Archibald's team shared with Taylor Wall & Associates, barely covered the cost of the project, the publicity has boosted the firm's business. "It would have taken us years to get the recognition in North America that this project gave us overnight," he says.

These are the folks that came up with the 3D mine map - so it looks like it was a good investment for them.

And so it looks like the Open source model has been proven valid in areas outside of computing.

It isn't a sham, it is a hint at something greater

[FreeUser]

Open source comparison is a sham

No, it isn't a sham, but it is a poor choice of wording.

Free Software, Free Media, and Open Source are subsets of a much more fundamental, and important, concept, namely freedom of information, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression, which together might be termed simply freedom were it not that that particular word has been so abused by pundits over the last century as to have lost much of its meaning. These freedoms are antithetical to secrecy at their most basic levels, and in their consiquences, whether that is secrecy of information, secrecy of methodology, or secrecy of design (to name just three).

So, while mapping the benefits of open and free information to those of open and free software is a bit of a misnomer, clearly the underlying theme that free information is, unsurprisingly, bringing the same benefits to this particular mining company that free source code does to software companies is a valid parallel to draw, in that these benefits are a consiquence of freedom of knowledge and freedom of information, in other words, of the freedoms being granted, of which free software and free geological data are but two small examples.

It is a shame that our intellectual property laws are such that these freedoms must be granted rather than assumed by default, making them (and their obvious benefits) so much rarer in our society than they need to be.