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Interviews: Ask a Question To Christine Peterson, the Nanotech Expert Who Coined the Term 'Open Source'

Posted by EditorDavid on from the talking-to-a-pioneer dept.

Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term "Open Source software" for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998. Now Christine's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers. We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.

Interestingly, Christine was also on the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on the state of California's nanotechnology task force. Her tech talks at conferences include "Life Extension for Geeks" at Gnomedex and "Preparing for Bizarreness: Open Source Physical Security" at the 2007 Singularity Summit. Another talk argues that the nanotech revolution will be like the information revolution, except that "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms," allowing molecule-sized machines that can kill cancer and repair DNA. Her most recent publication is "Cyber, Nano, and AGI RIsks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks." Christine graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemistry.

So leave your best questions in the comments. (Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment.) We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.

6 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Open source and medicine by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How can we more open source medical software? Given that medical devices are so heavily regulated it seems like it will be hard to get, say, an open source pacemaker system that users can hack, or at least audit.

    Radio software seems to be in a similar state - cellular modems, wifi chipsets etc. are all heavily regulated and closed source, with signed code required for updates.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:Open source and medicine by DevNull127 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Open standards" isn't remotely the same thing as open source. (Just because you can see someone's source code doesn't mean you can modify the source code, let alone re-distribute it.)

      I can't believe you're raving about proprietary software like it's somehow a good thing because they let you glimpse their source code once in a while.

      You can be bought pretty cheap, drinkypoo.

    2. Re:Open source and medicine by DevNull127 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > it was all that we meant when we said "Open Source"

      You've been pushing this lie a long time, but in fact there was no significant usage of the term "open source" before 1998. You've scoured the cosmos for anyone who happened to use the words open and/or source and glomming onto product names with the word "open" and then using it to act like the OSI is the bad guy.

      I understand that you think you're helping free software by attacking open source software -- but you take it too far when you also fabricate out of thin out this idea that people were using the phrase "open source software" before 1998. And you also denigrate all the work and contributions of the (actual) open source movement which began in 1998.

  2. Re:50 years ahead by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is no "top secret" work that is 50 years ahead. If there were, those people would quit and make billions in industry. You live in a fantasy world.

  3. Re:100% Proof Caldera coined the term prior to 199 by DevNull127 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Proprietary code! Never ever touch it! Never modify it! Don't even think about re-distributing it!" That's what Caldera's talking about -- and it's evil.

    I can remember when Slashdot used to understand the difference between proprietary and non-proprietary code.

  4. It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Martin. There's a certain company out in San Diego that we all know, parts maker and patent troll. They are working to put royalty-bearing patents in modern standards. They are using the exact same language as you at the standards committees, telling us that "there isn't one Open Source" and then going on to tell us that Open Source should only be about copyright, and that there should be patent royalties in standards that - regardless of what they say about its being only about copyright - Open Source would then not be allowed to implement. Unfortunately, they are gaining traction in important standards committees, especially the national ones.

    I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not working for these guys, you sound exactly like you are. What you are doing hurts both Free Software and Open Source (they are really the same). As I fly around the world to educate standards committees about the Open Source Definition and what they really need to do to accommodate Open Source in standards, they're going to be pointing at your words and using them against me.

    This is really important. For medical reasons, this is probably the last decade of my life, and I am spending a good part of it to work on this issue. You're getting in the way. Cut it out. I promise that nobody can trademark the words "Open Source" today, and you are feeling threatened for nothing.

    --
    Bruce Perens.