Re: [tlug] Zurus distributions experience

[Lars Kotthoff <lists@example.com>]

Hmmm. After reading your reply, I'm under the strange impression that we
actually mostly agree :)

>  > So you're saying that basically innovation only happens when somebody has a
>  > commercial interest in it?
> 
> Yes.  Economically, that's more or less the characterization of
> innovation, because turning something into a product usable by a large
> number of people is deadly dull, painstaking, hard work.

Certainly not done by academics, but there's loads of examples where open source
software is turned into something usable (for some definition of the word) by a
large number of people -- without commercial interest.

> I'm not going to belabor the point, but you misuse the term "innovation"
> throughout to mean "invention".[1]

That's entirely possible, English is only my second language :)
I mean something that's not big enough to be called an invention, but more of an
improvement to something that already exists. I'm not sure what distinction
you're making here.

> Don't be silly.  People do basic research for love, not money, and
> there is precious little money in basic research, except for "public"
> support.  OTOH, the developers in commercial research labs by and
> large have neither the free time, the talents, nor the inclination to
> do basic research.  This is not an accident, this is specialization.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

> BTW, the BSD and MIT/X Consortium licenses were written with the
> advice of some of the best lawyers in the business.  Do you really
> think that U.C. and MIT didn't know what they were doing?

Not at all. Again, I'm not saying that the GPL should be used for everything. In
these cases it makes IMHO perfect sense to release the software under a more
premissible license. The situation is different when you're working on software
which is highly specialised and the algorithms used in it are the actual
research.

> But another, very important purpose of publishing is to communicate
> the idea to those who will actually produce an innovation available to
> society.  You are entirely neglecting that fact, which is enshrined in
> the U.S. Constitution, no less.

That's not really different from publishing to enable other academics to base
their research on it. Somebody else works with your ideas. And keeping the
things you've found out to yourself doesn't really help anyone.

> Where do you think that "public" money comes from?  Not taxes paid by
> professors and graduate students!

They're paid by the general population (which includes professors and graduate
students) and companies. Assuming that a particular piece of research will only
benefit one or a small number of companies, it seems unfair that everybody else
(including competitors of those companies) should essentially subsidise their
R&D.

> But why not?  That's an awfully hypocritical position, considering
> that is what the vast majority of academics do.[3]

I think academics are taking stuff to base their research on and, eventually,
publish. So it's not really taking and not giving anything back. There's a
difference between standing on the shoulders of giants to see further (and maybe
not seeing anything), and standing there to be able to deal out your merchandise
more efficiently.

And yes, there're of course ways around the GPL. And it might be easier for
corporations to contribute to projects with a more permissive license. But they
can get involved in the research as well if they don't want to directly
contribute code. Given the selfish nature of people in general, I think saying
"You can have it, but you must share it." is better than "You can have it and do
whatever you want with it." given that a license can be changed.

Lars