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A reader provided good comments to a post where I addressed vague use of the term "open source ." To clarify a central point, when I refer to "open source" (or “free software”, “free culture”, or “free and open source software”), I mean the software industry movement. However, other items require elaboration...
Reader Comment: Don't confuse Open Source with business models that have sprung up around it. And don't confuse it with specific licensing agreements (such as the BSD or GPL).
“Open source” carries sufficient context within discourse on the modern technology industry to present an insular and unitary topic. The term "open source" stirs debate about software development practices, resides on a distinct set of licenses in the business environment, has an identifiable set of corporate business players and personalities, poses heated challenges against current intellectual property policy and even has an arguably cute penguin mascot. Even if "open source" carries more general form and meaning than my understanding, such connotations need not inform, and I argue, even distract, from discussion on technological innovation.
In limiting, and thus defining the contours of “open source”, I find that characteristics commonly cited to identify "open source" are not unique to it. Neither is "open source" an "either or" of "openness." To some extent, all science (including software development) involves a level of sharing, peer collaboration, free dissemination and other characteristics that some claim suggest "open source." Researchers at commercial software companies collaborate with one another, often working across organizations that span the globe, sharing internally research methods and results.
While I appreciate the reader’s reference to history, having studied some philosophy of science in my formative liberal arts years, I find it questionable that current software industry open source practices inherited the "spirit" or even relate to traditional scientific research. Reader Comment: Open source, at its heart, is nothing more than what science has been doing for centuries -- publishing and sharing methods and results, as applied to software with the least amount of friction as possible.
What about limiting the historical reference to Internet era innovation? To refer to “what science has been doing for centuries” leaves the discussion vastly open ended. To analogize how science innovated in previous centuries to modern technology seems to drastically underestimate today’s innovation. In the history of Internet innovation context, science was not always the kind of investment backed-profit oriented activity it is in the industry today with heavy oversight by investors, shareholders, and P&L executives struggling to meet fiscal year goals. Consequently, it would be nonsensical to compare academic or government sponsored scientific research to modern software development undertaken by the private sector. Doing so would simply ignore the basic insight offered by notable intellectual property scholars:
Some have argued that software should not be patentable even today, though that argument ignores some economic changes in the industry and in any event seems unlikely to prevail. Dan Burk and Mark Lemley, Policy Levers in Patent Law, 89 Va. L.Rev. 1575, 1619 (2003).
Finally, to address the reader's use of the phrase “with the least amount of friction as possible”; misappropriation was probably of less concern in early Internet innovation due to, amongst other things: cost of imitation, dissemination of misappropriated information not enjoying today’s instant communication, lack of general science infrastructure in society (computers, lab equipment, etc) and small populations of those with sufficient knowledge to even understand the research. These provided natural barriers to misappropriation, however changes in innovation and the technology industry now require regulatory rather than natural safeguards.
The relatively open intellectual property rights regime that typified the development of Internet infrastructure also appears to have shifted towards a pro-patent posture… the shift in US macroeconomic policy… assuredly contributed to the capital investment boom that underpinned the domestic diffusion of the internet. David Mowery and Timothy Simcoe (2002). The Internet, In Steil, B., Victor, DG, Nelson, RR, (eds). Technological Innovation & Economic Performance (229, 246), Princeton University Press.
posted by Noel Le @ 11:49 AM | Comments from Readers, Free Culture Movement
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