The Myth that R&D funding comes from Patents is seductive... but false.
The OVERWHEALMING lions share of all basic research -- from transisters to fuel cells to genetic codes to drug development is funded at least partially if not entirely by you and me: NSF, NIH, and public Universities. We already paid for it.
Given the blossoming of computing technologies resulting from (No, not Microsoft, not Apple,...) the Public Domain projects from DARPA, BSD, Linux, imagine the potential flourish of _REAL_ R&D possible if only we could agree that all scientific inquiry belongs to us all. Companies could compete on production quality, not Lawyers.
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The Myth that R&D funding comes from Patents is seductive... but false. The OVERWHEALMING lions share of all basic research -- from transisters to fuel cells to genetic codes to drug development is funded at least partially if not entirely by you and me: NSF, NIH, and public Universities. We already paid for it. Given the blossoming of computing technologies resulting from (No, not Microsoft, not Apple,...) the Public Domain projects from DARPA, BSD, Linux, imagine the potential flourish of _REAL_ R&D possible if only we could agree that all scientific inquiry belongs to us all. Companies could compete on production quality, not Lawyers.