Public money, private code, Jeffrey Benner, Salon, January 4, 2002.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/04/university_open_source/print.html
Cet article parle surtout de logiciel, mais la porté en est bien plus grande et concerne en fait toute la politique de valorisation de la recherche, et notamment les effets pervers du Bayh-Dole Act de 1980 aux USA, qui préfigure les derives françaises actuelles.
Pour résumer, cette loi a été faite pour favoriser le passage des résultats de la recherche dans le secteur industriel, en motivant financièrement les universités et centres de recherche. Cela a marché. Mais il y a des effets pervers, car cela contribue à réorganiser les politiques de recherche et la circulation de l'information en fonction des gains financiers possibles, au detriment du fonctionnement de la recherche elle-même, et de la nécessaire circulation et utilisation des idées et des techniques. S'il y a des effets positifs immédiats sur le financement des organismes de recherches, dus principalement à l'industrialisation de résultats existants, ou sur le point de naître, on peut s'inquiéter de ce que la viscosité introduite dans les échanges scientifiques, ainsi que les détournements de motivation, ne se traduisent à terme par un ralentissement de la production de résultats, et finalement une baisse de l'innovation.
En d'autres termes, les fermiers de la technologie ne sont-ils pas en train de manger le grain qui doit servir aux semailles. ... en pensant que c'est une bonne politique car, effectivement, ils mangent mieux aujourd'hui.
Bernard Lang
7 janvier 2001
Note: this forum is about free electronic access to scientific literature. The text has been slightly edited to be readable out of context.
One issue for computer scientists is that, to a significant extent, their literature is composed of programs. The interest of free software (free as in freedom, to do what you please with it) is that it can be improved and built upon, exactly the way one does for mathematical theories or proofs, or other scientific theories for that matter.
If Wiles had not published his proof (which was discovered buggy, and thus could be corrected), his result would have had, quite rightly, no credibility. The same holds true for software ... you cannot trust (in many ways) software that cannot be freely examined and experimented with (including making changes).
But the difference is that scientific literature belongs to the author, and hence scientists can solve their problem [ of free access to their literature ] by uniting and taking it in their own hands, as Stevan Harnad is suggesting.
On the other hand, software belongs to employers, which makes things a bit more difficult. More importantly, software is now encumbered with the patenting system (and also indirectly by legislations like DMCA) so that publishing software can become a criminal offense, not to mention court actions that can go very quickly over $1000 000.
All this is based on a totally misguided view of the economics of intangibles. For ideological reason, people try to apply a capitalistic model that worked well for material economy (e.g. 19th century). But the economic laws of intangibles are quite different (for example, marginal cost is zero), and there are many reasons to believe that the model cannot be adapted that trivially.
Actually, I do not know of a single article in economic literature that concludes that software patenting is useful. Quite the opposite. But I am interested in finding some ... if you know of any.
Scientific literature is just one problem. Probably the easiest one to solve right now... this being said without any intent to demean its importance and the work done here.
Bernard Lang
6 janvier 2001
Would the creation of the Internet be allowed to happen today?
Bill Hoskins (in charge of IP at U.C. Berkeley): "Whoever released the code for the Internet probably didn't understand what they were doing."
Smarr: "But I don't think universities should be in the moneymaking business. They ought to be in the changing-the-world business, and open source is a great vehicle for changing the world."
Beckman: "There are whole departments that create valuable new technology, and they can't get it out to the world because [the lab] is trying to make money off it."
Beckman: "Seeking to control computer-science research by putting intellectual property concerns before the goal of good science has destroyed countless projects."
Eisenberg: "You can make a clear case that research is being slowed by intellectual property claims."
The trend at universities toward trying to profit from intellectual property began with the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. Since 1980, university inventions licensed to the private sector under Bayh-Dole have spawned over 2,200 new companies that generate about $30 billion in economic activity every year.
But [...] taking privatization of the nation's intellectual property too far could stifle innovation and suffocate economic growth.