Open Source Life?

JimCricket writes "What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source? Download Aborted takes a look at this issue."

Comments

Code differences

[SIGALRM]

I'm not a lawyer or biologist, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the software industry. There are some clear similarities between genetic code (the blueprint for lifeforms) and software code

I disagree. Genetic code is a mapping of biological cells used to translate RNA codons, and is representational of a natural reality. Software code implements programs or data for some purpose, but is creative. There is a fundamental difference between the two, IMO.

no less safe than "natural"

[nester]

what prevents a bioterrorist from grabbing a sample of regular wheat and making a virus for it? where is the new vulnerability?

Re:no less safe than "natural"

[dknight]

Mutations.

Wheat is not all identical, it changes. The wheat in different areas, even, is different.

But what happens when all the worlds wheat becomes identical?

Its basically the same school of thought that goes into computers. A homogenous computing environment is more susceptible to viruses/etc than a heterogenous one.

And what's more...it's the US/European

[GillBates0]

corporations which're indulging in despicable patent activities, often at the cost of developing nations and in atleast one case farmers who've been using the so called "innovation" since thousands of years. Case in point: India Fights U.S. Basmati Rice Patent .

Re:I officially LGPL myself

[LostCluster]

You do realize that you're effectively creating a race of genitic slaves among your offspring. What if one of your great grandchildren don't wish to be covered by the LGPL?

open source and patented are orthogonal

[frankie]

The blogger is misusing the term "open source". All patented works are open source, but still proprietary, not "free". Also the code of any organism can be read by performing PCR on its nuclear DNA. True, this is equivalent to assembly language, but it's currently the only language we have for genetics.

(Side topic: Whoever creates a high-level genetic language and compiler will either win the Nobel prize immediately, or be burned at the stake. Or both.)

The problem is abusive patents. The Schmeiser loss completely blew my mind. Canada has given carte blanche for Monsanto to (secretly) shoot their wad over the entire country, then charge royalties on every farmer. Patented food crops go way Way WAY across the line of human decency, but our wonderful nations of Freedom(tm) say it's a great business model.

Words fail me. I can't properly describe how insanely awful this is.

Innocent? Not quite...

[the_skywise]

link

Judge Andrew MacKay refused to believe Schmeiser's initial assertion that so much transgenic canola pollen had drifted on to his field solely via wind and bees. During the trial, Schmeiser had already admitted 'experimenting' with Monsanto's Roundup Ready seed on his field. Herbicide-tolerant plants with a purity grade of 95 to 98 percent in relation to the patent-protected characteristic had been found in large areas of Schmeiser's canola cultivation area. Various experts testified in court that unintentional mixing via pollen flight from neighbouring fields could not have caused the discovery of this much Roundup Ready

Numerous farmers and agricultural experts share this view, as did the judge, who pronounced: 'I have found that he [Schmeiser] seeded that crop from seed saved in 1997 which he knew or ought to have known was Roundup tolerant, and samples of plants from that seed were found to contain the plaintiffs' patented claims for genes and cells.'

Now, personally, I'm of the belief that if Schmeiser arrived at his particular seed crop genetics through natural selection (which appears to be the case from my cursory research) then he should be allowed to make use of that crop HE developed naturally. But it appears that the law's viewpoint is that he knowingly developed "Roundup" proof crops to specifically use Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide without paying them a license fee. That's definitely a violation of existing patent law.

Re:Percy Schmeiser in his own words

[mal3]

Makes me wonder. If someone wrote a virus, that also happened to have a piece of patented code in it, say IBM's. Could IBM then sue everyone who was infected?

+1 Scary

[ericspinder]

All he needs is a flashlight and a campfire.

What he doesn't say is something that I found in following the link canadians.org to the information page on this issue, there you can find a link to the Judgement from May 21, it found that:

Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola

Sounds to me that they found it in a little more than that ditch as he claims. It's still an interesting read, and does raise some good questions. Like "who owns life"