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Where are the Boundaries to Open Source?
Andy Updegrove writes "In the last several days there have been several stories in the news that highlight the increasing tension between ownership of intellectual property rights (IPR) and the opportunities that become available when broader, free access to those rights is made available. The three articles that struck me as best proving this point were the announcement by Sun Microsystems that it had released the design for its new UltraSPARC processor under the GNU GPL, a speech by Tim Berners-Lee to an Oxford University audience in which he challenged the British government to make Ordnance Survey mapping data available at no cost for Web use, and reports that a Dutch court had upheld the validity of the Creative Commons license. Each of these stories demonstrates a breach in traditional thinking about the balance of value to an IPR owner between licensing those rights for profit, or making those same rights freely and publicly available. They also raise the question: where - if anywhere - are the natural boundaries for 'open IPR?'."
Of course, any new social paradigm, such as open-source, which challenges "current" intellectual "property" paradigms will stir controversy...
Open source is a tool that companies can use to increase their profits. Patents, copyright, and Creative Commons licenses are also tools. The point is, like always, to choose the best tool for the job. It wouldn't make much sense for Adobe to release Photoshop under an open source license, but it might make sense for Sun to release Solaris under an open source license.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
What are the natural boundaries of an idea?
Mike Hoye
"Where is are the "natural boundaries" of Rap? Or of lavender?"
I don't know if there are natural boundaries to Rap, other than the natural boundaries of human population. But lavender, on the other hand:
Wikipedia: "The lavenders Lavandula are a genus of about 25-30 species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, native from the Mediterranean region south to tropical Africa and east to India."
"There isn't even any analogy in the animal kingdom "
Wrong. Wolves and other animals mark their territory -- yet physical property ownership is just as theoretical as IP ownership, only it has a longer history. It's the threat of retribution that keeps other wolves from trespassing.
In human history, IP protection has been the norm for millenia. Why do you think tradespeople kept their techniques secret? Why do you think guilds were formed? To suggest that IP is a modern invention is way off base. What's relatively new is the structure of law encouraging distribution of knowledge by protecting profit incentive to innovate. Whether it's a good idea or not, I'd rather not get into -- but IP is as old as human invention.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
When you create something, there is a 'commercial copyright' and an 'artistic copyright'; for example "(c) 2006 Slashdot, written by Anonymous Coward". If someone wants permission to copy the thing, they ask Slashdot; if they want something else written, they need the Anonymous Coward.
Slashdot can sell its commercial copyright, or license it under terms more or less generous, but Anonymous Coward is saddled with the 'artistic copyright' until the end of his or her days. No pretending that CmdrTaco wrote it, not ever.
Now, no-one is promising that the creation will be accurate, or useful, or anything. Just 'sellable'.
All kinds of reasons for being generous; maybe someone has already paid you the 'price of freedom' of the creation; maybe you hope for contracts to write something new in the future;maybe you make your living in a completely different way.
"ownership" of intellectual "property" "rights" is just an absurd term to use for "exercising certain monopoly powers granted by governments to restrict other people's freedoms so you can make money." And given the absurdity of many recent patent claims, I think there's a good chance that the word "intellectual" doesn't really apply either.
"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller
I think the reason so many people consider the "Information as property" metaphor to be so off base is because they do not follow the same laws of physics.
If you take my car, then I don't have it anymore.
If you take my idea, I still have it.
If you are using my car, then I can't also be using it at the same time.
If you are using my idea, I can also use it at the same time.
What you do to my car directly impacts what I can do to it, and hence directly impacts me.
What you do to an idea does not impact what I can do to it, and hence does not impact me.
The list goes on. Property laws make sence for tangible objects that cannot be simultaneously shared. These same laws do not make sense for information, which operates according to fundamentally different physical laws.
Property laws applied to information result in really weird expectations, such as I should be able to put a lot of information on your computer, and also I should be able to take control of your computer in order to ensure that you only use it in ways that I see fit...since that information is "mine."
No, the computer is "mine," and as such, I am the one who should decide what I do with it. If you don't want me using your information as I see fit, then don't make it available. If you make it available, don't be surprised when I treat it in ways that are natural to its laws of physics (that is to say, manipulate it and duplicate it freely). I know that you would LIKE control over everything, but I don't want to surrender control over myself or my computer, so you will just have to pick a more fitting business/legal model.
Intellectual Property is the antithesis of trade secrets. The whole justification of Intellectual Property is that it will replace the natural* concept of secrets. That's why all system of IP registration include the requirement (or at least originally did) of disclosure; trademarks had to be used in commerce, copyrighted materials had to be published, inventions had to be demonstrated and documented to the extent that they could be duplicated by practitioners skilled in the appropriate arts.
Trade secrets were seen as detrimental to society, and IP was invented to supplant them. Unfortunately, the cure is turning out to be worse than the disease.
--MarkusQ
P.S. As for wolves marking territory, that's physical property. And the very fact that wolves do it means that it's natural by any sane definition of natural.
* I say that secrets are natural because we do see example of them in the animal kingdom; animals will go to great lengths to prevent other animals from learning things which might give them a competitive advantage. But they do this precisely because because they instinctively recognize that information is not "property" in any meaningful sense; my having it does not prevent you from having it too, and once you have it there is very little I can do (short of all out combat to the death) to take it back. In short, none of the conservation laws we normally associate with property apply.
I've owned a couple of startup software companies. I've sold a few and closed a few. In almost every case, I am personally liable and must put many of my assets on the table to operate the enterprise. I do need to be rewarded for this type of risk or I'm just not going to put my butt on the line like this and thus goes a couple hundred jobs.
Greed is the reason we don't live in caves...that and beer
On the other side of the coin, the right to create and invent is a natural right, and has been with us since the beginning. It is only in the past several centuries that this natural right has been eroded by idea monopolists and those who want to tie up exclusive rights to natural discoveries through physical force, in the form of patent and copyright law.
I've finally put my finger on the problem with the idea that open-source software is bad for the economy: It employs the Broken Window Fallacy of economics.
The fallacy goes something like this: A boy breaks a shopkeeper's window. The shopkeeper must then buy a new window from the glassmaker, who then buys bread from the baker, who then buys shoes from the shoemaker, making the child seem like a boon to the economy for having broken the window.
The problem with this thinking is that the money the shopkeeper spends on the window is money he does not spend on something that he actually wants. So the boy who breaks the window isn't a boon to the economy after all.
People argue that the creation of stuff like OpenOffice deprives the fine folks working on MS Office of their jobs. What's ignored is the fact that every company who once spent $300 a pop on Office licenses can now put that money toward projects that didn't exist before, or better yet (but more unlikely) pay it to their employees. And the guys at MS Office are now free to work on something that doesn't already exist.
Money is just a placeholder. The economy is actually about value, and OpenOffice adds what was previously considered hundreds of dollars of value to the computer of everyone who downloads it - at no actual charge.
When software can be distributed to the whole world for free, it's actually better for the economy than paid software.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Some examples of boundaries:
On the other hand, there are some cases where the boundaries are evaporating, and it's very cool. For instance, I've written some copylefted physics textbooks. At the time when I first wrote them (8 years ago), it was very hard to get photos. I ended up doing a lot of photography myself, which was fun, but there were limits on what I could do, both in terms of quantity and in terms of quality. Nowadays, if I say, "I need a photo of someone swimming as an illustration of Newton's third law," I just hop on over to Wikipedia, grab a nice photo, and drop a thank-you note to the photographer. We both get a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Find free books.
It's not a silly question. Perhaps worded injudiciously, but not silly. What's silly is to believe that since the Monarch butterfly doesn't have intellectual property, then we shouldn't either. The Monarch butterfly doesn't have hospitals, or schools, or orphanages. They don't create new ideas, compose poetry and music, heal the sick or seek to right injustice either. They are a lower life form. We humans, on the other hand, have been endowed with the gifts of intelligence (although sometimes you wouldn't know it), ambition, compassion, etcetera. There are natural limits to any system - be it intellectual property - or anything else. Those limits are tested over time and examined to find out if in fact the original system has evolved into a gradient of the original or into a new organism. Music was once definded melodically. Now we consider rap to be a high musical form. Radically different, but still music. It's all in the definition. The key word in IP is not "intellectual," but "property." The best analogy is to examine the difference between tribal cultures that don't have private property rights and cultures that do. While the tribal cultures are often romanticized and idealized, they more resemble a butterfly than man in terms of human progress. Private land ownership and the rule of law allows the stability necessary for long term investment and growth. Rail against greed if you will, but to deny that it is a primary motivator in the anthropology and sociology of man is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute because you think gravity is evil.
The onus should be on the IP owner to get those rights, not the burden of the layperson to avoid the automatic rights given to the IP owner. What I write here shouldn't be copyrighted in anyway whatsoever. I'm giving an opinion to somebodies opinion and it's copyrighted by OSTG or ConstortiumInfo or Andy Updegrove. Since this is derivative (or is it), I don't know who owns it. Maybe I own it.
I've argued in an article to be published (sorry, I don't have it on the web yet) that basically there is no reason to limit ourselves. The end of the current intent to impose a regime of control over intellectual property will allow us both the ability to produce better AND the ability to live more harmoniously because humanity's knowledge, the most valuable thing that exists in today's economy, will be better distributed and thus poverty.
Here is an example: things like open source are often considered limited to software, but why? Here in Ecuador, people are worried about the patenting of plant genes that could be used for medicines. Why not just make a "copyleft" so that any medicine produced with genetic code needs to have its code shared? That would make it easier for better medicines to be produced, would make the distribution better because poor people will be able to afford them, and will make it easier for other people to further the work and learn about how to design medicines, thus as a whole health in the world would be improved.
What's the big negative? Profits would go way down for a very small number of people who usually hold patents. HOWEVER, profits would go up somewhat for a whole lot of people, people who could become involved in the production of medicines and in medicinal research who are prohibited from that now. So, overall wealth would be increased, even as a few people would lose out...equality would prevail.
The big negative always mentioned is that the profit motive would be lost, but as already pointed out, it would actually be benefitted for a lot of people. Furthermore, profit is not the only motive for people to work (note how many people participate enormous amounts in Slashdot conversations sharing knowledge and bad humour at no cost).
I think that we could find this sort of analysis in case after case. Certainly there is an argument for artists -- whose artistic vision is often based on the product being a unique idea from a single creator (or a group for that matter), but it seems to me that creative commons at least has some interesting proposals in that regard to allow that vision while at the same time letting other people build on it (after all, what artist has never been influenced by another).
Peace
Precisely. That's why authors and publishers and producers will give you a strained smile and attempt to slide away when you run up to them announcing your latest idea for a book or movie. They know that ideas are plentiful, worth a dime a dozen, and that they're probably overpriced even then.
Hey! I have an idea. Let's create the world's best web browser. Cool. And now where are we? Well... no where. Now, let's talk about people who did just that, and the dozens upon dozens of man-years it took to write FireFox and get it to the point where it is now.
Hey! I have an idea. Let's write a book about wizards and elves and hobbits. And now that we're done with the idea, why don't we talk about JRRT, who spent the better part of his life actually creating that story and that world and those characters.
Hey! I have an idea. Let's make it into a movie! But how many people had that idea, and did nothing about it? Now let's talk about Peter Jackson, and the, what... nine years it took to actually make that film trilogy.
The fact is that IP law is NOT and never has been about protecting ideas. It is, however, about protecting a specific implementation of those ideas, and about protecting the people who did so. It's about protecting and encouraging that time and effort and skill and talent and investment.
In the case of the FireFox team, they knew that their investment in time and effort was being made in a product that was going to be given away to the world, and they made that choice. New Line made the investment in PJ and LOTR in the hope that people would like the film, and that they had the potential to be rewarded if that were the case.
They also knew it was a possibility that the public could hate it, and that they could lose their shirts. They rolled the dice. And won. But would New Line have invested in a relatively unknown director and production knowing there was no way whatsoever they would get that investment back? Would you?
You talk about value increasing upon propagation, but would the world have been richer or poorer without that film at all?
That's why all this talk about "ideas" is nothing more than a straw man, and little more than an attempt to trivialize the situation. Actually write that book or software, or produce that movie, do the work to implement some idea, and then--and only then--will we have something to talk about.
Yes, ideas are plentiful. But the skill and talent and time and resources needed to successfully implement them... are not. And that, if it has value to you, is what you're really paying for...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Free, open, unencumbered use of technology has been the baseline norm throughout most of human history.
That's not true. At one time only royalty could use a certain technology called "royal purple". And arcane webs of legal restrictionss (guild laws) on technical trades have been the norm for the past millenium. The famed reinheitsgebot, which governed German brewing and taverning for the past five hundred years, is a prime example. It said who could make beer, how to make beer, and how to sell beer. Until very recently for example, it was illegal to use artificial carbonation in German beer. Also, ship pilots zealously guarded their maps and logs, and were among the earliest supporters of IP laws.
Any time technology has threatened someone's livelihood it has been restricted, closed and encumbered. It is only in our modern era that technological progress has become a goal. And even today most people still don't like it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned