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Free as in Marketable?
An anonymous reader asks: "I work in IT at a research university. A few of my co-workers and I are in the process of planning a piece of software that we would like to release to the public under the GPL license, but we're running into issues with our "intellectual property" office which thinks we have a potentially marketable product. We would rather give the product away for free and see our university get some credit for the product. How have others dealt with this problem? It's a shame that money is more important to a research school than sharing research with others."
Sure, it sucks, but what do you expect? Research universities are all about the money- why do you think they're so well funded? Why do you think they do that research? Because they do research that in some percentage of the time produces something they can make a return on. Universities don't get rich off that 48.5% they get in overhead off an NSF grant... Yes, that pays the bills, but project commercialization and subsequent profit is what pays for expansion of programs and physical conquest as well as for all the non-profitable research going on.
It seems like shitty thing, especially when you're youngue and impressionable- an undergrad or master's student with her head full of ideas about Freedom and Information Equality. I wish it was that way, but most people aren't willing to fund science for its own sake- they want a return on that investment.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
And I am not a big corporate donor. I am a taxpayer. Depending on the state, I likely paid for that software to be written; I underwrite tuition at the university; the university was founded with a land appropriation, which if left private could have made my grandfather rich; a variety of special provisions by the state legislature give this university a wide class of special exemptions and preferences.
This is not Bell Labs or Xerox Parc, folks. *Those* are places that can whine about a return on investment.
And now my and my ancestor's investments in an educated society full of opportunity are being hijacked by lawyers and weak, cowardly, and greedy administration. The trustees and administrators of most universities in the US these days are a craven mafia eager to claim the public's infrastructure for themselves and set up a toll gate. These are the people who didn't make it on to the board of Enron and WorldCom because they were too untrustworthy.
Quit now. And LIGHT THE PLACE ON FIRE WHEN YOU LEAVE.