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Where are the Boundaries to Open Source?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:42 AM
from the continually-evaluating-our-position dept.
from the continually-evaluating-our-position dept.
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?'."
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Of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
To fall back on the often misued automobile example. I can design a car and sell the plans. Or I can design it and give the plans away. Or I can give them away under a license that says you can use them, but never charge for them. In fact, I can build the damn car and try to sell it. Or build it and give it to whomever I wish.
So you might think that, in your spare time, writing software and giving it to the world is a good thing. I may, contrarily, write software and try to sell it, needing to feed the kids and pay the rent. Or you can sell yours and I can give mine away. In any case, the market will decide if our creations have value, and are worth what we ask.
Your choice. My choice.
Parent
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
Intellectual property concepts are deeply flawed, terribly inefficient and incredibly wasteful, and about as well suited to the modern world as horseshoes on my car.
Parent
Ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
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-
Re:Of course...Consume-r (Score:3, Interesting)
Says the poster who has nothing to give.
That's funny, being that I share code freely, make it a condition of my employment contracts that I get to bring code I write from job to job, just give away large amounts of my previous work to my clients without charge and only charge for my time, have a jam band and release recordings of all our
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, except that it really isn't a choice for the end-user. How long before the automobile goes the way of modern IP? Right now, if I buy a car from you I can do whatever the hell I want to it. I can take it apart to see how it works. I can build another car similar to it if I have the time and the skill. I can take the engine out of your car and put it in a different car and you can't say a word about it. I can even *GASP* remove the alternator and sell it to someone else. Or I can sell the entire car, which may be nothing like the car you designed because I modified it. I can drive it on dirt roads, I can use it to deliver pizzas. I can autocross it, or add a rollbar and better suspension for a road rally. That is my *right*. I bought the damn car, I own it, so I'm going to do with it what I please.
I realize that at some point the analogy breaks down because a car can't be put into a replicator like a DVD can. However, it seems to me that we are becoming less and less of an ownership society and more of a "borrow" society. I talked to someone the other day who works for a large firm, and they pay 160 grand a MONTH to license some software for their business. That does not include any changes they want made to the software - that costs extra.
I don't have a problem with profit. I have a problem with racketeering. I don't really know where this whole "you don't own it, you only licensed it from us and we can screw you anytime we want" started, but it is one reason why I'm such a big fan of OSS. I don't mind paying for software. But I get really pissed when I'm told I a) have to pay for it continuously and b) am not allowed to do anything with it except that which is outlined by the lawyers for giant-corp who wrote it and took my money for it. What a scam. DRM is coming to hardware near you, and it is going to compound this problem. Until now, it was _mostly_ software that kept the consumer on a leash.
How long until we have to pay a fee to (GM|Ford|etc) before our car will start every month? When will our GE fridge start requiring a dollar every time we open it? I don't like rent-an-appliance places because they're a rip off. You never get to stop paying for the item (unless you rent to own, at about 2-3x the cost you could have bought the item).
Am I paranoid chicken little here? How many of us as kids tinkered with everything in the house, but find today that if we do, we're breaking the law?
Parent
Re:Of course... (Score:2)
You are not, however, allowed to roll back the mileage on the odometer even though it is technically feasible. The vast, vast majority of complaints about the legality of modifying hardware/software are the legal and moral equivalents of rolling back the odometer. If the activity is specifically undertaken to cheat someone out of revenue, then what you are doing is immoral and should be illegal. Why is it OK for
Re:Of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called a lease.
Re:Of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows95 is an old piece of crap. If you relabel your
How long until you pay a fee for your car to start (Score:3, Informative)
"Can't make your car payment? Then you can't get it started"
This type of device (no, this is not the only OEM of such devices) is frequently used in the sub-prime credit market for people who would have a tendency to not make their car payments, but still need a car in order to live their lives.
Or to put it another way, it's a way to get deadbeats to pay who live in conditions of suburban sprawl, where jobs people are qualified for
To be honest. (Score:2)
Isn't that why it's called "open"?
Re:To be honest. (Score:2)
Re:To be honest. (Score:2)
Gnu creates boundaries but in different ways from EULA commercial software.
For example I can not take the source code and use it without giving my source, nor can I use the source code for a tiny section of a big project and only give out a section of the code used. I would have to opensource teh whole thing.
BSD licenses and the apache license set the boundaries differently and in some circles are viewed upon as more free. The BSD one requires you to mention UC @ Berkely and has strange clauses to
Re:To be honest. (Score:2)
The BSD one requires you to mention UC @ Berkely and has strange clauses to advertising of the software.
No it doesn't. That clause was removed in 1999.
Refer to:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.ph
Re:To be honest. (Score:2)
spelling errors (Score:2)
What ever happened to proofreading articles again?
Re:spelling errors (Score:2)
Re:spelling errors (Score:2)
Re:spelling errors (Score:2)
UltraSPARK? (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe you meant UltraSPARC?
UltraSPARK defined (Score:2, Funny)
Er
Re:UltraSPARK defined (Score:2, Funny)
Re:UltraSPARK? (Score:2)
This would be the Scalable Processor ARK that Noah used.
Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
IPR isn't natural (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a trick question. "IPR" isn't natural, it's an invention (and a relatively recent one at that). So asking where its "natural boundaries" are is silly. Where is are the "natural boundaries" of Rap? Or of lavender? Where is the natural boundary between Spanish and Italian?
It's a silly question.
For the vast bulk of history (and for all time before that), there was no such thing as "Intellectual Property." There isn't even any analogy in the animal kingdom (just imagine Monarch butterflies issuing a take down notice to other butterflies that have infringed on their trademark look and feel). The "natural" state is for people to thinks, say, and do whatever they want, and to copy good ideas wherever they see them. That, in a nutshell, is how culture works. But very recently there has arisen the observation that some good ideas are hard to copy unless the inventor is willing to explain the trick to you. And one way to induce them to do so is to ameliorate their fear that by so doing they will create a host of competitors, by promising to prevent other people from using the trick for awhile provided that they share it.
Sounds like a fair deal, but, like many things, a little greed is all it takes to spoil it for everyone.
-- MarkusQ
Rap (Score:2)
It's a fact: The natural boundry of rap lies halfway between Kid Rock and the Beastie Boys.
Re:IPR isn't natural (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
IP != trade secrets (Score:3, Insightful)
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 secre
Re:IP != trade secrets (Score:2)
"P.S. As for wolves marking territory, t
Re:IPR isn't natural (Score:2)
Nope - you're talking about keeping secrets. Keeping a secret is diff
Re:IPR isn't natural (Score:2)
You're right, but you're misunderstanding my point. Keeping a secret is one way of maintaining control (control == ownership) of an idea. Whether it was legal ownership (as you said, a Renaissance invention) or ownership protected by secrecy, or strongarm enforcement by associations, the concept of IP is very old. Knowledge has been considered a resource for millenia, and control of a resource = ownersh
Re:Ideas cannot be put in a wheelbarrow (Score:2)
Talking at cross purposes (Score:2)
IP is in no way unnnatural
I believe you are talking at cross purposes with several of the other posters in this thread. Specifically, your assumption that "IP is in no way unnatural" -- in other words, that it is natural and reasonable it treat information as if it were property, with the consequent adoption of production/consumption metaphors, and all the associated control systems, is apparently preventing you from understanding what we are saying.
What you are assuming is simply not true. Note that
Re:IPR isn't natural (Score:2, Insightful)
Natural boundary? No. (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, kindred spirits are nice and everything, but if you're discussing IPR from a business standpoint (which is what the essay is really about) why would you reference the Bible?
The bottom line is that there are no natural boundaries for open source or for IPR. All boundaries are created by government law and structure of markets. Take away the law, and you've eliminated all boundaries, since business will have to compete on different things.
I think what the author should have asked, is "With the current US IP law structure, what markets will be best served by open source?"
Or perhaps," Can everyone tell me what markets are underserved by businesses with open-source as a model, so I know where to direct my investments?" That's the question I'd ask. Especially with the glut of VC in the market coming up, there is a fortune to be made by the wily early investor.
Fundamental problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a student on a school where they had a contract that said that anything I did create for my study they got the ownership rights of (of which the right of use is derivated from, typically arranged using licences). That contract you had to sign along with other papers needed to register to their administration (saying no means you can't follow the study) . As a bachelor student I helped out 2 students who where about to be kicked off from their master programme (this I heard from their mentors..). I used a plenty of GPL software (also LGPL audio libraries) and I made myself some GPL software too. The project became a succes, the two students I helped out suddenly got all the credits (that's another story, not relevant now) and the school wanted to sell their succes story en help the two students to form a company after their succesful graduation.
This is where the situation of fundamental ignorant behaviour towards the GPL became apparrent to me. The schools opinion was that all of my source code belonged to the students. The conflict couldn't be worse, since I transferred all my rights to the FSF (including my copyright). The schools point was that this tranfer was not legimate, since my school was convinced I made this code for a school project. So the GPL licence was not valid in this situation. They also said that if I would use anycode, I would be sewed to court and that if I would need any information that I had to write to their lawyer
So I did. I explained him the importance of GPL software for universities and other educational organisations. I explained also that this contract made it impossible to use any LGPL or GPL software. I explained this was especially a problem for the audio technology faculty of this organisation, because they did a lot of programming using Free Software and even got courses in some software that was Free (as in freedom). If there was a conflict for me, it was for the large part of this faculty. The other problem was that almost nobody of the students was aware of the contract nor its consequences. He took my point and said I was right and this should be taken account for. He would speak to the board about it. I said I wanted to write an article called "How educational organisations embrace Free Software".
After kept waiting for a long time I decided to go to the board myself (I was luckily graduated very succesfully). This guy didn't understand one bit of it, nor would he be so smart to get informed by the experts from his organisation and thought that I was threathening somehow, to use my publication to get my GPL'ed software back. I explained him this was not the case, but I still got a very stupid ignorant reply. This proved lack of policies which account for the GPL and the right to learn and write Free Software.
But this isn't one case on its own. There are more schols with this kind of problem. Maybe this is why MIT has it's own "free" licence? How to fight for your rights to party with freesoftware on your school? How do we begin to fight?
Re:Fundamental problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fundamental problem (Score:2)
I'll certainly agree that they shouldn't have such a policy, but by signing it, you pretty much gave up any right to complain about this.
Now, if I understood your description correctly, you could argue that your code contributed to those two other students didn't fall under the contract to which you agreed... But in that case, you've just moved the violation from
Reverse the Question (Score:2)
Free, open, unencumbered use of technology has been the baseline norm throughout most of human history.
It is special monopoly protections of "Intellectual Property" that is the more recent development.
The subject limitations, use limitations and duration of such special monopoly privileges should be reviewed carefully to see how far they should extend to bring the most benefit to society as a whole.
The default baseline should be that any idea is open to anyone to use, to improve upon and to teach to othe
Re:Reverse the Question (Score:3, Insightful)
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
3 out of 4 words in first sentence are bogus (Score:4, Insightful)
More on the Ordnance Survey and IP rights (Score:2)
Vector One discuss national mapping and the UK Ordnance Survey [geovisualisation.com] and link to a The Guardian article [guardian.co.uk]. The OpenGeoData blog has a podcast with Ed Parsons [opengeodata.org], CTO of the Ordnance Survey. While GIS User host an announcement by the OS about advanced spatial address data access [gisuser.com]. From the Guardian article: "Sir Tim Berners-Lee told an Oxford University audience last week getting "basic, raw data from Ordnance Survey" online would help build the "semantic web", which he define
Why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
Natural Rights and Idea Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other side of the coin, the right to create and invent is a natural right [blogspot.com], and has been with us since the beginning [blogspot.com]. 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.
Re:Natural Rights and Idea Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
In contrast, the granting of patents over ideas is arbitrary. Which ideas deserve such protection? Who gets to own a particular idea? And who decides? All of these decisions must be made subjectively.
The other arbitrary attribute of patent law lies in its blatant conflict with other natural rights, namely, the right to create and invent (which is
The limits to mammals in the late mesozoic... (Score:2)
The Broken Window fallacy of economics (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Oh, yeah... (Score:2)
some examples of the boundaries (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:I guess it depends. (Score:2)