Is Stiglitz the official economist of open source?
,----[ Quote ]
| Why is he the official economist of open source? Because his main point
| supports the open source thesis, which is that breaking monopolies on
| information is essential for free trade and economic growth.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2348
The philosophy spreads like fire:
Free Knowledge, Free Technology
,----[ Quote ]
| The Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference (FKFT) is the first
| international event which will centre on the production and sharing of
| educational and training materials in the field of Free Software and Open
| Standards. With the objective of promoting Free Software and the sharing of
| free knowledge, the FKFT 2008 Conference will bring together hundreds of
| people from different continents including government representatives, school
| and university teachers, IT companies, publishers, and NGO's. By gathering
| together people from all these groups, we aim to stimulate both present and
| future collaboration between diverse disciplines, sectors and countries,
| through the medium of free software programs and the sharing of successful
| experiences related to free software and free technologies.
`----
http://fkft.eu/
Here is a great writeup:
Good stuff, shame about the bad press
,----[ Quote ]
| These opinions are almost certainly not shared by the wider community of
| consumers, businesses, economists, legislators, and policy-shapers. At the
| highest level, there are those who no longer believe that all property is
| theft but appear to make an exception for IP. Since every newly created work
| builds upon the words, the thoughts, the ideas, and the knowledge created by
| countless others in their furtherance of humanity, any attempt to ring-fence
| an item of IP, and exclude others from it is an attempt to misappropriate
| part of the common intellectual heritage of mankind. Since knowledge and
| information can be shared with others without depriving oneself of them,
| there is no loss to oneself if such an act of sharing takes place.
|
| At a lower level, there are those who accept the existence of IP rights, but
| reserve their criticisms and their hostility for specific manifestations of
| it: the enforcement of copyright against large-scale private copyists, the
| use of trade mark rights to carve up markets so that genuine goods cannot be
| imported from a country where they are sold cheaply for resale in another
| country where they fetch a better price; the theft of traditional knowledge
| and culture which is then repackaged as copyright- or patent-protected
| property; the patrolling of industry by unproductive patent trolls, intent
| upon securing a rent where they create no value; death by patent monopoly for
| millions in the developing world who, in the unlikely event that they can
| even access vital medicines, cannot afford them. To the IP professional and
| his clients, this list can appear depressingly endless.
|
| [...]
|
| This study makes one thing quite clear: attitudes toward IP rights focus
| principally upon their negative qualities and do not connect them with that
| which is positive. Thus, new medicines save lives, while patents kill; music
| is cool, while copyright is a clamp; brands are brilliant, while trade marks
| are tools of trade manipulation. It is too much to hope that the public at
| large will wake up one morning, enlightened at the beneficial, positive, and
| above all necessary role played by IP rights, but we can at least aspire to
| teach that, between that which they praise and that which they condemn, there
| is a powerful causative connection.
`----
http://jiplp.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/3/5/273
Related:
Critic of Software Patents Wins Nobel Prize in Economics
.----[ Quote ]
| doom writes "You've probably already heard that the Nobel Prize
| for Economics was given to three gents who were working on advances
| in mechanism design theory. What you may not have heard is what one
| of those recipients was using that theory to study: 'One recent
| subject of Professor Maskin's wide-ranging research has been on the
| value of software patents. He determined that software was a market
| where innovations tended to be sequential, in that they were built
| closely on the work of predecessors, and innovators could take many
| different paths to the same goal. In such markets, he said, patents
| might serve as a wall that inhibited innovation rather than
| stimulating progress.' Here's one of Maskin's papers on the
| subject: Sequential Innovation, Patents, limitation (pdf).
`----
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotYourRightsOnline/~3/170631743/article.pl
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