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Public Money, Private Code
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Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
Fine by me (Score:4, Insightful)
This is getting pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
What's next? Journals filled with nothing but abstracts and hundreds of blank pages because the results of the experiments are copyrighted? Why don't we just ditch the entire peer review process while we're at it - nothing good has ever come of it.
If you're a publically funded university then the results of your research should be public domain, end of story. It's sad to see that universities are becoming more and more all about the money.
Re:Glorified AOL (Score:3)
Re:Fine by me (Score:3, Informative)
There have, however, already been several reports of this being done in a quite unethical fashion, where the professor or the university takes both the fame and the cash. This is quite a different matter. A few people reported that they didn't even get good grades out of it. Reasons are up for speculation, but one possibility is that they protested too much.
Gross power imbalances are almost always bad, and one must be aware the the dominating party is quite likely to take unfair advantage of things. This is why "independent businessmen" were so respected up through the 1920's (and a bit of that lingers). They were the free men, and were not (usually) excessively domineering. Of course, there wasn't (usually) a gross disparity in power between them and their employees. At the end of the twenties jobs became scarse, the number of independent businessmen declined, and there *was* and increasing disparity in power "if you want a job, you take it on my terms, or you starve". Their respect declined noticably as their (relative) power rose. Note: This is just one thread of a tapestry, but I believe that it exists as I have stated.
Respect in this context is sort of a projection of what I believe would be the answers to the questions:
1) Is he a good person?
2) Do you like him?
3) Do you feel that you can trust him?
4) If you could gain by hurting him, and nobody else would know, would you do it?
5) If you could gain by hurting him, and he couldn't find out who did it, but your friends would know, would you do it?
The dabate of late has been... (Score:2)
Re:The dabate of late has been... (Score:5, Interesting)
If NCSA hadn't been quite so... obstructive, the university probably have gotten a huge donation from Netscape Corporation at the height of the bubble, which if they were smart they'd have converted to cash money. The same's true for UCB and Cisco... probably many other situations too, where companies are spun off, or founded by graduates using intellectual property.
Universities aren't built to make money directly be releasing products per se. You can't even count degree-granting as such; your money buys you the right to attend classes and sit exams, not to pass them. Universities also earn money by conducting research for industry, but the nature of research is that it's open-ended and ongoing, more like a time-and-materials contract (like a consulancy) than a units-shipped model (like a games house).
Universities can make money in the private sector, but they way to do it isn't to imitate corporations. Taking equity in a spin off to exploit research funded by the university itself from an internal budget in return for facilities space is a proven model.
Finally, this scenario is different in the UK, where the majority of university funding comes from the taxpayer. The license attached to that code should make it free for use by UK citizens, but charge a fee to everyone else.
Re:The dabate of late has been... (Score:2)
No... it would be worse.
Their code should remain Free as it is the only chance they have to attract investors otherwise.
Re:The dabate of late has been... (Score:2)
Bzzt! Logical argument violation code #4af1: 'False Dichotomy'.
Other options would include eliminating government spending for things like faulty missile defense systems or the NEA and using the savings to spend on education instead.
Re:The dabate of late has been... (Score:3, Insightful)
It only makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
However, teaching isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore. With the government cutting the money for higher education ($100 billion last year) and with the ever-tightening restrictions imposed by Affirmative Action (raising dropout rates to 25% in some fields) it's no wonder that schools are starting to find ways to make money any way they can.
It may be going off on a rant, but it's time that we take money from the military and start giving it to the school systems (especially publically-funded schools like universities are) because otherwise, the U.S.A. is going to become a group of complete loser jocks who couldn't tell you the difference between a hole in the ground and the goatse.cx guy.
It was only a matter of time...
Re:It only makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
That's simply not true. Very few public schools are research intensive. Most of the time they are private schools like CMU or MIT or Ivy League schools which are also in operation solely through tution, alumni giving, and proceeds from research.
As great as it would be to come up with some horrible conspiracy about how Microsoft has double agents working in University Administration, it's simply not the way it works.
The only way you can give great research opportunities to undergrads and have world class professors teaching intro CS classes at someplace like MIT is... tada: MONEY.
I think the real difference here is that most technologies were always spun off before with some sort of licensing deal to develop a product. The reason aarpanet made it through is because there wasn't any obvious indication of how huge it would be. Most "old school" engineering research is often sold to another company or a few professors might spin off a company to develop a product from the technology.
Microsoft didn't do this.
Re:It only makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Back when I was in college [vt.edu] the professors ALL had research projects on the side. It seems that part of being a tenured professor is that you have to do research and get yourself published, etc...
Now most undergrads aren't doing research, mostly because the system isn't set up for them to be researchers. Many (especially in the engineering and CS degress) barely have enough time to finish their homework/projects/work in the evening, much less do exaustive research in some new field. Post graduate students naturally have plenty of research projects.
Still, one thing that became painfully obvious after awhile is just how much money it takes to run a school, and how little of it there was to go around. I'm not surprised in the least to find them looking for more things to sell.
Re:It only makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
Hmmm? University of Michigan, Purdue University, Wayne State University, Michigan State University, and the University of California (especially Berkely) are all public and are all research intensive universities, to name five right off the top of my head. (UCB is where we get the infamous BSD-descended operating systems, btw).
As great as it would be to come up with some horrible conspiracy about how Microsoft has double agents working in University Administration, it's simply not the way it works.
FWIW, Microsoft has a long-standing history of recruiting from major universities. Microsoft and Bill Gates both have a long-standing history of donating money to schools. C'mon, you can't tell me there isn't SOME favoritism in there.
The reason aarpanet made it through is because there wasn't any obvious indication of how huge it would be.
ARPANet/DARPANet was a military project, not a university project. DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. Duh. The universities wouldn't have had a choice.
Microsoft didn't do this.
Nobody said they did, but as an aside, isn't just FUN to blame Microsoft for everything? Had a bad day at work? Microsoft. Couldn't find a parking spot? Microsoft. World Trade Center explodes? Microsoft. See how fun it is?
Re:It only makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry but i simply cant let this statement go by. Do you have any proff for this statement?
As for the idea of universities making money, I think that we are witnessing the further progression of a wrong headed idea that "ALL THINGS SHOULD BE RUN LIKE A BUSINESS." Recently, Penn voters voted down a plan to privatize schools. The questions becomes why would making a profit help education?
It must be made clear that SCHOOLS ARE THERE TO TEACH, NOT TO MAKE A PROFIT.
For some reason, many people inclduing this poster simply arent critical thinkers about what "Making a Profit" means, what values it implies. Hell, just today Argentina told the "free market system" to fuck off as it has left the country penniless. Lets be clear, the free market system is anything but free to most people of the world. It is made especially to let a certain group of people get rich, to hell with everyone else. I think this poster fits right into this group, esp with his post i am responding to.
Anyway, thanks for reading,
Re:It only makes sense (Score:2, Funny)
[Rant#2]Haven't you heard? We're at War Against Evil (tm). It's vitally important for every American to support the War Against Evil (tm) in every way they can, and you suggesting that money should be taken away from military contractors in Texas...errrr, The American Armed Forces The Greatest Fighting Force In The World is unacceptable.
In these Times of Tragedy, we cannot afford to question the leadership of President George W. Bush, Who Made a Really Good Speech And Is Defending America, lest the terrorists win by dividing us as a country. I'm sure you now realize that Erradicating Evil From The Face Of The Planet is more important that trivial concerns like educating the next generation of Americans.
Re:It only makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
The biggest cost sink in the government today is social security. Maybe we should kill that program eh?
Re:It only makes sense (Score:2)
I know that was meant to be a rhetorical question, but given that one cause of unemployment is lack of qualifications, in the medium to long term diverting welfare money into education does make a lot of sense.
To take it a step further, since education up until 18 is freely available, perhaps dropping out of school should reduce eligbility for state aid.
Re:It only makes sense (Score:2, Interesting)
What many people apparently don't realize is that alot of research conducted by universities is subsidised by various interest groups [dod.mil]. The research that comes out of these programs becomes property of the University and is passed on to whoever funded the research. The only thing the students (who did most of the work) receive in compensation is 3 or 4 credits.
I doubt this is true about CS and related programs at Penn State (where I recently graduated from), and to my knowledge, they do not claim ownership of students' code. But don't get me wrong, they stick it to us in another way.
Students in "non-engineering technology majors" are now assessed a $750 surcharge per semester to (supposedly) cover costs of their respective majors. I don't know exactly how many students this includes, but you can bet Penn State is making a boatload of money from it.
So no, we don't need to take money from the military to dump into an already greedy education system.
More money for equipment and research.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know about america, but here in the UK most universities are fairly tight on cash as the government doesn't have enough money to go around. Reciently there has been the introduction of tuition fees to UK universities in an attempt to increase the funding available.
Now Universities have a lot of one thing.. talent. Why shouldn't they use the inventions and intelectual property that they own to generate more money to improve facilities and teaching quality?
Yes, in the past universities have produced decent free products that have encouraged development and standards. But this doesn't mean that it won't happen any more. Each invention needs to be considered and dealt with appropriately. Some inventions will be best as open free code / standards, some will make the university in question money if sold.
So long as the money is re-invested to allow the university to grow then I think this is a great thing.
Open source, or truely free? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Open source, or truely free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at FFTW, for instance (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open source, or truely free? (Score:2)
Re:Open source, or truely free? (Score:2)
Re:Open source, or truely free? (Score:2)
Are they the ones that reap the benefits or is it the University they work for?
The source for SoftUpdates was always there for everyone to read. For commercial-use, you had to pay. Afterwards, everyone was able to use or develop it freely without even the fear of license collision.
Re:Open source, or truely free? (Score:2)
Why GPL? (Score:2)
You can say that the corps don't pay what they should, but attack the tax system then and not something else.
[quote]The universities should have the power to control how money is made of their work[unquote].
Most certainly not. Why should they have that?
Re:Why GPL? (Score:2)
Well they should have it because they decided what to do, how to do it and paid for anything that had to be paid for from their budgets! If the Uni does not have the right to control how money is made from their work who should? You suggest that no-one should, universities should simply give away their work for anyone to use as they wish, this is insane! A simple example, MS watch all Unis, and when one of them stumbles on anything worthwhile, a modified version will appear within a MS release within (insert suitably short time period) which contains an incompatable modification (think Kerberos) which then has handed MS the entire market for the Universites research (that's what the anti-trust case should have been about in my books). Even if we didn't have an MS, any work done by the communal effort of students, lecturers, individual tax payers and corporate tax payers should be protected for the benefit of all the people who inputted into the project. Simply making a work public domain provides no protection, it simply provides a means for anyone to do whatever they want (as does BSD really). Why is protection neccessary? Because as this entire article points out the Universities want to extract money from their work and I believe they are entitled to make the money (or is
Re:Open source, or truely free? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.fulcrum.org/features/public_domain.h
Blame the patent bandwagon (Score:3, Insightful)
and
It's no coincidence that we in the
Perhaps, when governments figure out that not all software patents are sensible, then we'll see a return to a more sharing, less "grabby" attitude in the knowledgemakers.
Re:Blame the patent bandwagon (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blame the patent bandwagon (Score:2)
The issue is one of management, but it's also one of expectation. The world is getting more global, more capitalist, more liberal. One of the libertarian ideas is "if you don't like it, get a different one". In order for educational institutions to survive in a liberal market, they need to be attractive to the best candidates, in order to turn out as many overacheivers as possible, in order to attract the best candidates, etc. Market forces exist even at the idealogical pillars of society.
And what's the best way to facilitate such attraction? You got it, funding. And how do you improve funding? Either attract private funding (graduates, important donors who like/need the press), or hire a business-savvy funding manager. And what's the best way for a business-savvy funding manager to raise funds? Sell product.
The only product (other than education) that a university can sell is technology. Innovation. Knowledge-creation. And the reason it is attractive to sell it is because of our bizarre legal idea that anything I thought of patenting can be patented, which means anyone with an idea (even if fairly common) can patent it. Now, if the whole world of industry is already doing it, and making silly money in a high-profile way, then OF COURSE a fund-raising manager is going to see it as an early opportunity! It's selling knowledge creation! It's freely available on campus! It won't detract slightly from the research of the PhD students, and will likely attract more as students see the $$$.
Of course this doesn't even broach the sticky subject of market forces at the student level, i.e. do I as a student choose a project with industrial value, something patentable? or do I choose something worthwhile to society, and knowledge in general? Alas, that's a question for another day...
Re:Blame the patent bandwagon (Score:2)
The big problem is that when you charge industry for something that cost is simply filtered down to the consumer. So basically every tax payer. paying twice for the same innovation. Once through the funding universities with our tax dollars and yet again through goods we consume from companies that pay to license these technologies. Universities taking my tax dollars to conduct research which turns right around and forces me to pay some company even more money angers me greatly. I thought that universtities are for the open exchange of ideas and the education of students. Boy was I ever naive. >=P Perhaps its time to rethink our whole university system? Our higher education system is *really* screwed up! In lots of large public universities there are literally hundreds of students in ONE class which the professor doesn't even teach. Getting a teaching award at many state universities is often the kiss of death (I've heard this from several professors). Our universities should exist primarily to *teach* not be an extension the R&D dept for companies. This isn't how things should work people.
public money as WELL? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always seen American uni's as just another business. Or are they so incompetent with funding that they claim to need $30k per student (a lot more than this country claims as being a full yearly course cost!) PLUS government funding?
If the Gov gives the occasional grant.. surely that's no diff to giving the occasional grant to (random example) the airline industry? It doesn't guarantee all taxpayers free plane tickets.
Of course, from this you can argue one of two things -- 1. "exactly, Uni's are private businesses, in fact, the government should stop giving them money altogether" or 2. "exactly, Uni's are public entities, in which case they should be equally accessible regardless of income, like libraries". Anything else is inconsistent.
Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
The US has neither the highest per-capita income int he world, nor the highest standard of living.
As for 'lower salaries'.. salary means absolutely nothing until compared to the cost of living. Seriously.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
If you measure standard of living as "the amount of stuff you can buy given local prices" the the PPP numbers on the same chart show the USA is third, with no sizable country ahead of it. "Cost of living", which you cite, is best measured this way.
Now one could make a quite valid argument that standard of living really includes things like nice weather, beaches, elephants, or icebergs. Depending on which of those you chose, of course, the country coming out near the top would differ.
Note that historically, the USA is not always so completely in front. The dollar is presently overvalued by many measures. But it is a historical feature of the last several decades that the US is always near the very top by these metrics.
What is astonishing about this is that the USA is both so large and so rich. I would argue that gives us (I am a citizen) a much greater obligation than we currently acknowledge to help the poorer bits of the world, for example by hunting down malaria cures.
Don't get me started. (Score:5, Interesting)
This really got to me:
Bill Hoskins, who is currently in charge of protecting the intellectual property produced at U.C. Berkeley, thinks it must have been a mistake. "Whoever released the code for the Internet probably didn't understand what they were doing," he says.
No, Mr. Hoskins, they knew what they were doing, apparently you don't. If making money was all that mattered to you, you should've joined a corporation.
Re:Don't get me started. (Score:5, Insightful)
What a curiously idiotic statement. All they had to do was to to use their 20-20 prescience to decide that this arbitrary piece of technology was going to be huge, and then they could should have kept it proprietary and commercial, because god knows that wouldn't have slowed the adoption of it, right?
This is either a misquote, or Mr Hoskins needs beaten around the head with the basics of capitalist society. You can't dictate to the market until there is a market, and you can't create demand for a new technology by cackling and saying "All your install base are belong to us". Even Microsoft couldn't do that until they'd killed all the effective competition.
Re:Don't get me started. (Score:3, Interesting)
Berkley did not invent the internet, they did not even invent TCP/IP.
They (Bill Joy really) coded an implementation of the TCP/IP protocol which was already defined and implemented on several other systems.
They did add the standard sockets/inetd interface. And the TCP/IP stack as coded is the basis of nearly all current UNIX and all Windows implementations of TCP/IP.
However this happened largely because the code was free (as in beer), if Berkley had tried to charge for thier TCP/IP stack and patent thier sockets implmentation then SUN, Microsoft et all would probably have written thier own version rather than get into a contractual relationship for a fundamental part of thier systems.
This principal applies to almost any part of the internet as it now exits. Free and open software gets used because it is cheap, easy to improve and easy to standardise. Proprietry software is avoided because of expense, vendor lock in, difficulties in standards setting etc.etc.
As Mike Berniers Lee said "If we had charged for Mosaic nobody would have used it".
Re:Don't get me started. (Score:2)
Re:Don't get me started. (Score:2)
Noooooo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see, University of California at Berkly is a state school. That should make Hoskins a state employee. State schools may be under pressure to trim costs and earn money, and they have strayed into the IP game, but their mandate should still be research and education. What are they making money for if not to create and dissiminate information?
Also, remember that DARP etc was all Federal money. The federal government did not give that money to UCB so that UCB could have a never ending franchise.
Hoskins should resign. His statements violate the spirit of the original research grants and his mandate.
Sad (Score:2)
Surfers of the world unite! Be free! Information is not evil, and coding is not a crime!
OK. OK. In seriousness, how can we promote the free sharing of code within academic institutions so hard pressed for cash?
Soon to be called... (Score:2, Funny)
This could backfire (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally, I'm curious as to how many talented students will be motivated to continue cranking out code for a lab that may take it from them and sell it with no compensation. Comp Sci departments are already struggling with high dropout rates as skilled students leave to make money in full-time positions. I don't see these kinds of actions as ways to encourage good students to stay in school and finish off their degrees.
Re:This could backfire (Score:2, Informative)
> If colleges are doing this as a method of enhancing revenue, I have to wonder if they're prepared for the loss of potential alumni contributions that actions like this could cause.
Where the heck did you go to school? On my planet the only thing that affects alumni contributions is how well the ball team did this year.
And of course, the 98% of the donations go straight back to the athletics program anyway.
Most public universities in the USA are just fronts for hiding the fact that the state legislature wants to own a professional football team. Though I advocate higher education, I'll never donate a dime to any school I ever attended.
It's the American way! (Score:2)
Of course they'll sell their code! It's the only way to be an American! *Giving* code away, well, that's just un-American.
And we don't want to be un-American, do we?
(/sarcasm)
Let's just kill the goose, shall we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's just kill the goose, shall we? (Score:5, Interesting)
NFS - released for free. Widespread.
NeWS - brilliant Windowing system, far better than X. Kept Proprietary. Died.
Java - released for free (effectively). Widespread
To roughly quote Stallman: making people pay money each time they use a copy of your software is the biggest disincentive you can create for its widespread adoption
Dunstan
And why shouldn't they? (Score:2)
It may not be in keeping with what we specifically would like to see done with the code, but...as far as i'm concerned, they're not doing anything wrong, or bad, or illegal by trying to make money off code that was developed on their boxen, and on their time.
If you cant stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, if you don't want your cow gettin' out, keep your barn door shut, and if you don't want Corporate Entity X making money off your work, don't develop it on their gear on their time. Simple as that.
Re:And why shouldn't they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And why shouldn't they? (Score:2)
... they're not doing anything wrong, or bad, or illegal by trying to make money off code that was developed on their boxen, and on their time.
In many cases, those boxen and the labor by the researchers/students were paid for by federal grants. In other words, US citizens have already paid for the work. Why shouldn't we benefit from it instead of paying for it a second time to use under some restrictive license, if at all?
It's more complicated. (Score:5, Informative)
Second, many government research contracts force the professors to share their code. The Mach kernel, for instance, began life at Carnagie Mellon thanks to government money. Rick Rashid, one of the project's leaders, released it with a very open BSD-like license. He says that work developed with the public money deserves to be as free as possible. This has been going on for some time.
I suppose it could be getting worse, but I don't know if it is as bad as the author suggests.
Re:It's more complicated. (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, many government research contracts force the professors to share their code.
Can you back this up? I am not sure why it was in the same paragraph with:
The Mach kernel, for instance, began life at Carnagie Mellon thanks to government money. Rick Rashid, one of the project's leaders, released it with a very open BSD-like license. He says that work developed with the public money deserves to be as free as possible. This has been going on for some time.
In this case, you have a person who realized that decided he should license things this way, and did so. I think that, when it happens, this is why.
I have worked on various projects that were funded by your tax money, and they are now being sold as proprietary software. In that case, the person who got the grant did not decide to put it out as open source. I also do not have numbers to back myself up, but I am guessing that the vast majority of government contracts do not require the source code to be released under a BSD type license.
I wrote something about this on the siliconvalley.com debate with Mundie et al:
http://www.fulcrum.org/features/public_domain.html [fulcrum.org]
Re:It's more complicated. (Score:3, Informative)
To preserve incentives for private dissemination and development, NSF normally will not restrict or take any part of income earned from copyrightable material except as necessary to comply with the requirements of any applicable government-wide policy or international agreement.
The disposition of rights to inventions made by small business firms and non-profit organizations, including universities and other institutions of higher education, during NSF-assisted research is
governed by Chapter 18 of title 35 of the USC, commonly called the Bayh-Dole Act.
Essentially, since 1980, NSF (et al.) has stopped asking that federal research be released to the public, instead giving the grantee "first refusal."
The only problem I see with this... (Score:2)
Re:The only problem I see with this... (Score:2, Informative)
The students are using university property to develop the code. They only pay a fraction of the cost via their tuition; the rest is obtained from other funding sources including public and corporate ones.
Since there are so many interests funding university resources, the answer as to who owns the intellectual property developed with these resources becomes a whole lot more difficult to figure out.
I've dealt with the University of Alberta's Industry Liason Office [ualberta.ca]. Here is a summary of their performance since 1994 [ualberta.ca]. In the short term it is often diffcult to deal with them, but the overhead fees they charge are important: "The indirect costs -- or overhead -- of research include utilities (electricity, water, natural gas, and so on) physical plant (building maintenance, repairs), library support, financial and other administrative costs" (source [ualberta.ca]). Check out that page since it'll even give you a percentage breakdown of where the overhead fees are allocated. For instance, 11% of the fees go to the university's libraries. That means that other students will get access to more books.
The ILO departments also provide important services to researchers such as patent background checks and market analysis. They're not just blood-suckers waiting to bounce on student- or professor-generated ideas.
Socrates should have licensed his works (Score:2, Interesting)
In the UC system you are lucky if you actaully see a professor your first two years. And the UC system has been busy turning itself into a corporation for decades. Learning smerning. Who needs learning when there is money to be made?
And they make a ton of it. But isn't the corruption of education from sport an equally puzzling issue? I mean who doesn't realize college is now a joke? I would say UC has a great reputation because it has the top pick of the largest number of US students many immigrants. That has the more to do with UC glory than anything.
And keeping your intellectual property secret has as much to do with marketing your school (you don't really want the public to be able too see how rather mediocre the professors are) as it does with profit. They go hand in hand.
Two quickies (Score:2, Interesting)
2) Software for modeling global climate change, the behavior of viral epidemics and traffic patterns are among the programs researchers can't get released, he says. This kind of software not having the greatest market (how often do you wish to simulate a viral epidemic) makes it extremly expencive makeing it more probable that those who do need it makes it themself - also releasing it commercial. That makes to great pieces of code that could have been the best ever had they learnt from any of each-others mistakes (even great code has got bugs and stupidities.)
Exploit students as cheap labor and get away it! (Score:5, Funny)
I've got the funny feeling universities aren't going to be so "forward thinking."
Re:Exploit students as cheap labor and get away it (Score:2)
A typical university agreement does involve royalty checks to the authors. But it still sucks.
Re:Exploit students as cheap labor and get away it (Score:2)
More importantly, you never see anything from the patents because the Universities get too greedy when it comes to liscencing - and therefore, no one ever liscences it. So you waste your time pursuing a patent when you should have just published it.
As for the Ph.D. - students right now already are cheap labor - more like indentured servitude. You work you way to a Ph.D. and freedom. Students already are exploited as cheap labor and the Universities get away with it in the name of "education". Now all the work experience is indeed practical education, but the rights of the student to work he or she created are almost non-existant.
Berkeley sued Cisco, yes? (Score:2)
It's not the selling that bothers me... (Score:2, Informative)
Now if the University want to give up all public funds... It can do whatever it wants, but as long as they're using my tax money, I want my software
Public funding of Free Software (Score:2, Interesting)
So, how does one get the government to buy into this plan? Perhaps it's time that the Free Software Foundation [gnu.org] or Software in the Public Interest [spi-inc.org] hires a professional lobbyist to make some inroads into the US and other governments. Free Software is reaching the point where it is a highly viable alternative to propietary solutions. With the proper lobbying and data showing positive cost/benefit analysis, perhaps we can get more momentum behind Free Software.
Re:Public funding of Free Software (Score:2, Insightful)
More government handouts are not a solution.
Government should not be in the business of taking people's money as taxes and using them to promote one thing over another. I'm sick and tired of government using our tax money for social engineering.
If we want free (as in freedom) software to succeed we should accomplish it by earning that success...by writing good software that people (not just us geeks) want to use because its better quality, less expensive, more flexible, and unencumbered by the licensing issues, and the privacy-invasive marketing and advertising schemes.
Trying to accomplish it by government dictate with taxpayer's dollars is doomed to failure and is just socialist social engineering.
GKC
Re:Public funding of Free Software (Score:2)
You need to stop watching Bill O'Reilly. What's so bad about the government HELPING PEOPLE?? Would you prefer, say, Microsoft driving the free software development? Do you actually think that a soulless corporation is preferable to the government? At least the gov't has a reason to want the country to succeed - they want to exist! Corps don't care about nations and cultures, in fact they're mostly "obstacles to business".
Also, you've forgotten the one rule of American society: people are idiots. Therefore, you have to work with the lowest common denominator. Motivate through rhetoric and only let a few think, because they're the only ones who can.
Libertarians are so fucking naive.
You can't have your cake and eat it , too... (Score:3, Insightful)
These universities and labs should either be 100% private or 100% public. If they're public, if they accept public money, then the results should be available for all citizens to see and use. Alternatively, if they want to auction or license something off to the higher bidder, then the "revenue stream" should go back to the public taxpayers, not to the university or lab. We're the real "owners" of the product because we paid for it.
On the other hand, if they want to become private organizations and get off the public dole, then they can do what they want.
GKC
They better not... (Score:3, Funny)
Here's how they should break it out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule #1) If Students worked on the project, and were not compensated by things such as free tuition, comparable salary with public sector, or royalties of the distributed project they can not sell it.
Rule #2) If the project was funded by the US Government, State or Local Government, it can not be sold.
Rule #3) If the finances come from money that is considered 'tax deductable' by the person(s) giving the money, they can no sell it.
Rule #5) All proceeds from said sale of software is taxable as a standard corporation.
Until the rest of the Americans wake up and realize what is going on with education, it will continue to go down the tubes. It's not that Universites have suddenly gotten greedy, it's that they've suddenly gotten desperate. College Tuition is getting to be out of reach for more and more people. Or, more and more people are starting life with $40,000, $50,000, even $60,000 worth of debt for basic state universities.
It's a sad commentary on America. Guess which departments of Universites are the best funded?
Sports.
It's pathetic.
Re:Here's how they should break it out. (Score:3, Informative)
$40000 for a state university? In Texas, it was around $1500/semester when I started, and around $2000/semester when I finished. We're a little below national average but not that much. I can see that much or more for private schools.
Re:Here's how they should break it out. (Score:3, Insightful)
So now you are going to re-define the rules ? Well, let me take a stab at presenting the likely reply from the Intellectual Property Office.
Rule #1) If Students worked on the project, and were not compensated by things such as free tuition, comparable salary with public sector, or royalties of the distributed project they can not sell it.
Legally, exclusive copyright licensing from code written by students for class projects belongs to the school. This copyright licensing will help to maintain the very education that the student was receiving, and future students will receive better education at less cost because of this licensing.
Rule #2) If the project was funded by the US Government, State or Local Government, it can not be sold.
Money alone does not buy you intellectual property. If you fund a research project, that money assures that the project gets done, nothing else. If you want to fund a project and maintain the intellectual property, you might think about maintaining in infrastructure that can support researchers careers, instead of just donating a few hundred thousand dollars.
Rule #3) If the finances come from money that is considered 'tax deductable' by the person(s) giving the money, they can no sell it.
Again, this is a gross misunderstanding of what you get for your buck. At a corporation, you pay for the project, you pay for the researcher's overhead, you ensure he has a retirement plan, you give him benefits, you give him resources to ensure he can do the work, and part of his job description is creating intellectual property for the corporation.
At a university, the researcher gets grants from a variety of sources. The University provides job stability, the University provides overhead, the University provides benefits for the researcher, and the University has exclusive licensing to all intellectual property (although the holder maintains some rights for royalties). But it is not part of the job description that faculty create intellectual property. Promotions do not consider it. It is just a bonus. And it is the decision of the University as to what happens to it. The University is still much more responsible for the actions of its faculty than the grant sources.
It's not that Universites have suddenly gotten greedy, it's that they've suddenly gotten desperate.
Would you deny that such IP laws have had benefits ? For example. the Cohen-Boyer patent between UCSF and Stanford created Genentech, and has funnelled a BILLION dollars back to those universities, which are now boosting research. Cohen and Boyer did not have to make this patent to keep their jobs, but the careers of hundreds of investigators that followed them are much easier as a result, and more basic science research will get done.
On the other side, if Berkeley has licensed BSD originally, there would probably be no FreeBSD today, and much of our Internet software would perform much worse. Somehow there is a time to sell licensing rights, and a time to give them away, and a morass of ethical issues in between.
Re: Tuition increases (Score:5, Interesting)
I place most of the blame at the feet of the upper-level administrators of the colleges and Universities. My father is a PhD, teaching at a state-owned college, and the level of corruption is incredible. The dean and his appointees all give themselves large raises every year, while he announces to the faculty that once again, he won't be able to give out a raise due to budget constraints. He also, of course, feels his job requires the college to provide him with a car.
All of this starts a chain-reaction, where you get only bottom-of-the-barrel teachers willing to work there. These "teachers", in turn, pass students on through the system without ensuring that they've really learned the material. (For the small salaries they're paid, they don't want to put up with fights with students who scream and moan that it's "unfair I got an F in your class!")
These same deans and administrators are more concerned that their campus looks impressive and top-notch than whether or not their teachers are using the latest textbooks. They know that lucrative govt. grants aren't possible without dazzling the TV and print media. In fact, they typically spend so much time being a spokesperson for the college/University, they fail to notice what goes on "day to day" in the institution.
When they do win these grants, do they really help the students? Only partially. Again, grants are great profit-makers for the higher-ups. I've heard stories of schools that hire people full-time just to research and apply for as many grants as possible. Then, these people get a cut of the money off the top as a reward for each one they get.
So what about private schools? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or are we talking about using students' code for profit?
Either way it could be argued that the college is maximising its assets to bring in more money to increase the standard of education at that school. Idealistically, the more money a college makes, the less it has to charge for tuition, meaning more people can afford to study there.
It's standard practice in the corporate world that the employer owns the rights to employees' code if that code was developed on the company's dime. Does this principle stand for students' work, done on University computers during classes?
How does the /. community feel about a private school selling applications that were developed in-house by paid IT staff?
I'm curious because I work in the IT services department of a private school.
Hiding research results/prototypes is bad science (Score:3, Insightful)
If the software produced is the result of the research, then hiding the source code is even more disasterous. Hiding research results it probably the best way to totally cripple science as we know it.
Research must be conducted under the scrutiny of the public eye to be truly useful.
How can we fix this? (Score:2)
Some how the idea of using tax dollars to enrich private corporations doesn't seem right, even if it is legal. There are plenty of corporations that fund university research through grants. For example, the CA avocado growers association pays for research into things like soil science. Usually the grant pays for a grad student and a lab tech does the actual experiment for the CA avocado growers project. The grad student does more basic research or their thesis project. I'm guessing that is similar to how it works in CS, EE or Mechanical engineering.
this post is redundant
Cornell? (Score:2)
Not sure what I think about Universities owning Patents. In general, I don't like the idea, but if it lowers the cost of college it may be a good thing. This may be a good way to lower the costs. College is to expensive, anything that helps is good, I hope the kids who helped invent whatever it is get a piece of the action.
-Pete
Re:Cornell? (Score:2)
Then all you get is a full-page blank square with a little puzzle piece inside.
they can try but it will still get out. (Score:2)
Or simply EVERYTHING you write place it under the GPL.
It'll probably piss off your professor or whatever but it will keep them from profiting on your work and making money from your tuition... remember you are paying them to educate you. everything you do is your property not theirs.
The high horse stampede... (Score:2)
Here are some reasons why maybe IP for universities is a good idea:
(1) It rewards better universities over mediocre universities through market forces. A place like Stanford or CMU is likelier to get a patent and profit from them than Joe Blow Fraternity College.
(2) It helps reduce the gap between professors and industry salaries. Universities have a hard time keeping profs in areas like computer science, business administration, finance and bioinformatics. If they are told that they would ultimately see some economic benefit from their ideas is likelier that they will stay.
(3) Admittedly, research is funded by tax dollars, but so is most industrial research which is given generous tax breaks.
To be clear, I haven't yet made up my mind on this issue, but the one sidedness of the postings in
Old stuff (Score:3, Informative)
But I'm not saying this is a bad thing, because the money the university makes off licensing IP is used in part to keep tuitions down and offset taxes. So I can continue to afford classes, and I can live where I live because the tax rates aren't outrageous.
Mosaic (Score:5, Informative)
Good news: Spyglass re-licensed it to a major corporation, so the university would get a percentage of all sales of that corporation's version.
Bad news: The corporation was Microsoft, the version was Internet Explorer, and it was distributed for free (as in beer). A percentage of $0 doesn't fill the coffers very well.
P.S.: The authors of Mosaic were annoyed by the university's policy, and wrote a new browser at a company named Mosaic Communications. The university claimed Mosaic was their trademark, so the company changed their name to Netscape.
Re:Mosaic (Score:2)
What's ironic about it is how much better it proably would have worked for them if, instead of attempting to license it as a proprietary thing, they had opensourced it and kept the project's home/leadership there. Then a splash scree/title bar saying "NCSA Mosaic" would be in the face of nearly every computer user in the world right now, instead of a fading memory in the minds of some tiny fraction of that.
Or something like that.
Sad, but true (Score:2, Informative)
Biting the hand that feeds: (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think the move to privatize CS research is natural and good, you are mistaken because you do not understand the economics of the scientific process and peer-review. If the universities and labs make valuable software, then why shouldn't they make money off of it? Oh, they should "make money off of it" for sure, I'm not arguing that. What you have to understand about my argument is that you can make money without restricting software distribution. You don't have to say "you can't copy it or use it or see it unless you pay me first."
Economically, it is crucial to learn the difference between economic value and market value. If you say the distinction is unimportant, let me remind you there is no such thing as a free-market economy where economic and market value are fully balanced. There are cases where a thing has more economic value than market value and vice versa.
A piece of research software, in the form of a source tarball, can be compiled into a useful productive component of a machine. It can also be modified, improved, extended, etc. to create a new source tarball which can be compiled into a superior component of a productive machine. The source of the value in any of these elements is the ingenuity of those who created the original source code (or those who created the theory behind it). Most of the combined science of prior history is always a necessary ingredient for this ingenuity and vision.
Newton: "If I have seen far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Ask yourself if you could do without Newtonian Physics on the chance that prior work was unavailable because some greedy short-sighted boob decided not to let anyone read Aristotle (for example) on the off-chance something of great value would come of it and boob would be left out? If you think about it, I.P. licensors are usually assholes trying to set up a retirement plan based on the value of someone else's continuing work.
You can't believe in God if you believe in intellectual property. You can't take it with you!
Now the economy is "adjusting" to the wild ambitions of people who discovered the Internet late... People who were around for the whole thing know that the value of the Internet is actually pent-up demand coming from prior licensing bungling with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Circut-Switched networks are not as efficient as Packet-Switching.
I'm sorry for the livid tone, but I'm tired of all the whining Ayn-Rand type wannabes running around thinking "I'm a good person, I suffer righteously, and I got the other guy down so I'm gonna stick it to him!"
I know (because I'm educated) that the litmus test for what side you're on is whether you believe you're partly responsible to future generations or not. Just think about what kind of world you would like to be born into and live that choice. Damn. I'm too worked up to even finish an argument. I retract everything. Forget I said any of this...
It's not so cut and dried (Score:2)
Like many things, taking that ability to its extreme may be a bad idea, but there is certainly some middle ground that can satisfy the university's need for funding and the researcher's desire to publicize his or her work. The approach of licensing technnology to nonprofit entities at no cost but licensing to for-profit corporations for a fee seems like a good compromise in many instances.
Certainly there will be those breakthroughs that just beg to be free. The case of BSD (at least in retrospect) is certainly one.
It just strikes me that a well thought out intellectual property program at a university or research lab should give much more than a passing glance at the impact of the technology that their institution develops and develop a licensing plan that is appropriate. The Salon article certainly promoted a certain agenda, but remember, not all IP directors are money hungry despots and not all professors a zealous advocates of free software for everyone. There are calm heads out there!
-h-
Mosaic versus Netscape (Score:3, Insightful)
Stanford ignored SGI, MIPS, Sun, Yahoo (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand Stanford did invest about $3000 initially in HP, plus some low cost land. That only got them about $600 million in donations from the founders over the decades.
It's already happening in other areas of school (Score:2)
Is the RIAA behind this? (Score:2, Funny)
Universities rarely release into public domain... (Score:2, Informative)
History re-write (Score:3, Insightful)
If I remeber it correctly ARPA paid BBN Corporation in Cambridge, MA to put and IP stack on BSD, which in turn it gave back to Berkley so that it could become "public domain". After that Berkley re-wrote the IP stack and added a plethora of tools (I think Bill Joy tries to take all the credit for the IP-stack re-write. .
I'm pretty sure my history is correct. In that case how the hell this retard, Bill Hoskins, at Berkley ever expected Berkley to "license" it lord only knows.
I absolutely love how technology-related companies and universities re-write history to show that they were on top. I wrote a 20-page paper about MS re-writing history a few months ago that I'll perhaps post here some day when I have more bandwidth. . .
its wrong, but it makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
The government has a place in developing and deploying basic technologies: roads, space technology, weapons technologies, communications technologies. Government support is what made this nation great and powerful. The market cannot address these needs, and it never has.
Yes, I have heard this lament before (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember, back in 1993, Eric Allmann (The original Sendmail devloper), in an interview, was lamenting that if he had a nickel for every Sendmail installation, he would have become a very rich man.
Of course, this would have never have happened. We are looking at traditional market economics: The less something costs, the more people will purchase (or use) the item in question.
The only reason that Berkeley's TCP/IP stack and that Sendmail caught on was because they were the most open-source implementations out there. If Berkeley listened to the likes of Bill Hoskins, people would have simply used some other more open codebase, or have implemented their own open codebase.
For example, when somebody tried to extract licensing fees out of people using his MP3 decoding codebase, people simply re-implemented an MP3 decoder, not using his code. When Fraunhoffer started mumbling about MP3s being patented, people implemented OGG Vorbis.
The same thing would have happened with a Bill-Hoskins-license code base. The code would be forgotten today, and some other free implementation would be the one everyone is using today.
- Sam
Universities should not get into business... (Score:3, Informative)
Even before the release of Netscape, university tried to sue them for copyright infringement. But finally they saw the light and settled.
Jim Clarke says all this in his book 'Netscape Time'. He also contrasts how Stanford and Illinois operate. Stanford EE and CS departments get their 'investment back' in donations (often in millions worth of shares of startup companies). Illinois, tried to cash in on students' work and ended up with a creamed face.
Not likely... (Score:2)
Re:Not suprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, there can never be enough art museums on campus, can there? Notice how only 2 out of the cluster of six photos on this typical college home page seem to having anything to do with education. [utpb.edu]
Re:strong analogy to copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
You fail to see the difference between a published work that can still be accessed by the public yet protected and code that is copyrighted, not public domain, and illigal to reverse engineer.
Do you get it? Probabaly not. So let me put it this way. Anyone can get access to my university library and rifle through all sorts of research. So its still in the public domain and open to debate. We can have a discussion about whether Chomsky was smoking crack or not when he thought up generative grammar based on his works.
But if universities start to restrict who can see the research (for fee is considered a restriction in my book) then we are in a situation where only the wealthy get to know. And I imagine that if schools start to license software they will not release the source. And this is very bad. As a programmer I have been shocked by the poor level of real world skill I have seen in profs I have worked with. I have seen more than one prof sent home. Unfortunatly, most of the public believes profs are Gods. And this is marketable as long as you keep reality a secret. And that is what scares me. The profit drive conflicts with the needs of science for open debate.
Did you get that? You might want to read it again.
Re:Legalities? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two sides to this - on the plus side, I think it is great if a university can generate a badly needed revenue stream from the work they do. On the other hand, any privitazation of science reduces access, public value, and collaborative potential of that science.
Another issue not much adressed is that undergrads and graduate students often get screwed in the process - experiencing little reward from the product of their labor.
Re:There is a simple way around this... (Score:3, Informative)