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Researching The Open Source Way
A reader writes: "Eugene Eric Kim, who also writes on the webservices channel on DevChannel.org, has posted a research report on open source communities. The two projects/communities studied were Touchgraph and Squirrelmail, examining how they work together." Looking at it, I think the research report was sponsored by The Omidyar Foundation, who are the EBay founders; and the report is also licensed under the Creative Commons license.
Let's live in a society where all source is closed, and programmers get paid for their contributions!
(And then fired, and forced to work on opensource projects to keep their skills up while looking for work.)
Oh, wait, we're there already.
is the continuing copyright-extension fight.
In the future, responsible academics and other researchers will all attach liberal-use licenses (hopefully ones putting the documents into the public domain or similar) to such research documents, so that they're not still under onerous restrictions 80 years (or, say, 99) after the study has been done. Maybe there is some exception (though none spring to mind) where a company / organization believes that it will be able to benefit substantially by withholding such research, but I think there's a far greater possibility for gaining goodwill by acknowledging that for many / most / nearly-all / note-how-much-I'm conceding-here copyrighted materials, the current slouch toward Forever is at best silly and often worse.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
isn't this same as doing master's thesis/project with a large number of group member? i dont see the difference.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
The most interesting part of this article is that it is reasonably open, itself. The main reason that companies "own" a lot of Intellectual Property is that they either sponsor it in a University, where all the smart people are, or they buy it from the University later. Or, in some cases, just steal it and hope nobody notices.
If there is now a grassroots movement to start publishing at least some core research under free or free-ish licenses, then this can't happen. However, there's not a lot the companies can do about it.
I'm going to guess that one article isn't going to scare anyone. BUT, if we see more and more free/free-ish papers, especially peer-reviewed, then the situation may change. Universities don't pay their employees much (!!) at present, so selling their souls to private companies is often the only way to eke out a living for researchers and lecturers.
Now, if we take away an entire chunk of that chain, what happens? The researchers still need to eat, but their work is now usable and verifiable by anyone. They're not going to get paid by companies for something that's open, as the company can't patent that. Never mind they can still make money, they won't see it that way. Too blinkered by far.
So where to the academics get their money? From the University, if the University wants to retain any staff. In turn, this means that the Universities will need to get more cash. They can't charge students much more than they do, so that means they'll be forced to demand - yes, demand, not ask - for more money from State and Federal Government. The threat? No cash, no school.
Instead of treating schools as something to be kicked around, and maybe paid a few cents to keep them quiet, you'll (slowly) start to see budgets for education move out of single digit dollars and become closer to being on-par with other sectors.
Ok, this may seem like a massive leap. Where's my proof? The British system, and all the changes it has been through in the past 30-40 years, shows one thing very clearly. Education is bistable. It can EITHER operate through sponsorship from companies, OR through grants from Government.
Universities don't generate revenue, per se, they merely generate the MEANS to generate revenue. As such, they will always cost more than they can directly obtain, but they will ALWAYS be far more profitable to support than to let rot.
If, as I hope, this is the start of a trend to make academia truly open and unencumbered, then companies won't be interested. They can't control the product, they can't even control the institute. AT&T found that out, with the BSD tapes. Berkeley simply re-wrote them.
Here's hoping that one nail in the coffin of the corporate power-block has finally been hammered into place.
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)
From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob):
"All infidel coalition software has been seized by the Special Republican Guards! God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis."
More at 11.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Have you hear the word of OpenSource today?
"Researching The Open Source Way" == "Conducting research that examines open source projects"
It does not mean "Conducting research in a model based on open source development"
Or even "Publishing your research under an open source licence"
(although this research was published under an open source licence, that was not the point of the paper)
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
We may not agree with everything RMS has to say, but is it fair to use the "GNU is Not Unix" logo/category on an article with a headline about "Open Source" rather than "Free Software"? That's bound to antagonise some people who could probably do without it.
Company X patents something in the US that happens (in say India) but isn't patentable.
They then get the WIPO to enforce the patent in India forcing the Indian company to pay royalties for something stolen by a US company.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This actually seemed like an interesting article, until he had to bring up the SUVs... Right there, I lost all respect for this article, and didn't even finish it. Guess that's what happens when you can take a good idea, and screw around with it by planting political agendas inside of it. Damn you liberals, damn you all. (There, that is my insertion of a political agenda. Luckily I am not trying to write an unbiased article.)
bag CmdrCocko, you'll be glad you did. Also be sure to check out the Official Taco-snotting FAQ, it's around here somewhere. I think. Maybe.
The Omidyar Foundation was brought to you by The Omigod Consortium. Hmm... the names are kind of.. strange..
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
Even tho what's all ready been said is true, the difference is even greater. Most colleges (certainly here in the U.K.) have intelectual property clauses in their small print which give the college / university as an organisation all I.P. rights over student's work.
This could cause problems for example when a research project goes under at one establishment; I.P. rights must be acquired before the project can be continued using the original research at other research centres or private companies.