a research and innovation perspective on free and open source software (foss)

A research and innovation perspective on Free and
Open Source Software (FOSS)

Dr Derek W. KeatsdKeats Innovations
[trading under of Kenga (Pty) Ltd]

http://[email protected] +27 82 787 0169

Parallels between
science and software

wealth creation

innovation

social benefit

Permission
culture

The act

2008

Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act (Act No 52 of 2008)

2011

2010

2009

Draft regulations,
consultation with limited impact

To ensure that IP outcomes of publicly financed R&D is protected and commercialised for the benefit of the people of South Africa - be it social, economic, military or some other benefit.

NIPMO operating

The regulations

Regulations from the act
and the establishment of a
National IP Management
Office (NIPMO)

Consistency
of strategiesThe
regulations
impact
FOSSFOSS
lessons
for NIPMO

Permission
culture

Freedom 1 and Freedom 3 require the source code

The four freedoms of
Free Software

Open Source

Free and
Software (FOSS)

Free

Just take some software and....

To understand
what freedom
means in
the software
context...http://www.flickr.com/photos/unnamed/47093936 BY-SA

To understand
what freedom
means in
the software
context...http://www.flickr.com/photos/unnamed/47093936 BY-SA

Use it however you likeInstall a copy on more
than one computerGive or sell copies to other peopleStudy the source
code and learn from itAdapt the source code to anything you want Give copies of your modifications to friends & colleaguesJust take some software and....

code and learn from itAdapt the source code to anything you want Give copies of your modifications to friends & colleaguesJust take some software and....

Without asking
or paying for
permission

Free software

code and learn from itAdapt the source code to anything you want Give copies of your modifications to friends & colleaguesRespected memberof a global community

More marketableas a software
engineer

Improved knowledge& skills

You

CEO of an innovative
ground-breaking company


Proprietary software

Free software

code and learn from itAdapt the source code to anything you want Give copies of your modifications to friends & colleaguesRespected memberof a global community

Facing in a lawsuit

More marketableas a software
engineer

Criminal record

Improved knowledge& skills

You

Cease and desist order

You

Potential imprisonment

CEO of an innovative
ground-breaking company


Image adapted from Wikipedia


The two layers of
FOSS space in the
operating of
computing devices

Image from Wikipedia

There are relativelyfew of them, even
with all the variations

There are many ofthem, and a lot more room for creativity


FOSS

Proprietary

FOSS

Proprietary


Scarcity

Abundance

Proprietary softwareFree softwareThe scarcity is entirely artificially maintained

Scarcity

Abundance

Proprietary softwareFree softwareProtected,
controlled,
secretShared,
freely
available,
no secrets

Knowledge

-- comparison modeled after Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price

I Am Not A Lawyer

Software
Licenses

Disclaimer: IANAL

License

legal instrument usually making use of contract law governing the usage
or redistribution of software

Underpinned by Copyright

FOSS

Copyright

All rights
reserved

Proprietary Software

Some rights
reserved

Free and Open
Source Software

Derivative

work

CopyLeft
requirement

Derivative works
must share the
same conditions

No CopyLeft
requirement

Derivative works
do not have to
share the same
conditions

Applies at

distribution

Differentiating software

Non-differentiating software

Software that contains your core business model, and therefore embodies your competitive advantage in the market place

Software that does not contain your core business model, and is not a major component of your competitive advantage in the market place

FOSS

Don't
distribute

Bruce Perens

Economic
perspective

Marginal costof production

Compete on
quality

Compete on
price

Maximum
monopoly price

Controlled,
legislated
economies

oligopolies

cartels

Gratis

Price

Scarcity

The marginal cost
of production for
software is zero.


Compete on
quality

Compete on
price

Maximum
monopoly price

Counterfeitmarket is
guaranteed

Controlled,
legislated
economies

oligopolies

cartels

Profit

Gratis

Price

Scarcity

In a competitive
economy, prices decrease to just
above the marginal cost of production


Compete on
quality

Compete on
price

Maximum
monopoly price

Capitalist,
competitive
economies

Controlled,
legislated
economies

oligopolies

cartels

Profit

Gratis

Price

Scarcity


Compete on
quality

Compete on
price

Maximum
monopoly price

Capitalist,
competitive
economies

Controlled,
legislated
economies

oligopolies

cartels

Profit

Services
revenue
stream,
bartering,
shared
costsFOSS

Gratis

Price

Scarcity

Co-opetition

users can be a major source of innovation

Eric von Hippel,
Professor & Head of the
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group
at the MIT Sloan School of Management

Barriers to
innovation

The Internet a radical decentralisation of innovation

Yochai Benkler, Professor of Law at Harvard
at the eG8 Forum on May 26th

Barriers to
innovation

Successful innovation

Starting
point

Knowledge

Permission

Cost

Barriers to
innovation


Starting
point

No such thing as scratch

Operating
systems

Compilers

Programming
languages

Core
applications

Databases

Webserver

Frameworks

Digital
object store

Libraries

Version management

Scalability tools

Load balance

Scripting languages

Virtualisation

Testing

eBusiness
tools

Graphics
tools

Communications
tools

Integrated
development
environments
(IDE)

Videoproduction

Audioproduction

Office suites

Design

Web
browsers

CRM

Accounting

ERP

No such thing as scratch

Barriers to
innovation


Starting
point

Knowledge

Software
as knowledge
expressed

Knowledge

Knowledge

Knowledge

Barriers to
innovation

Starting
point

Knowledge

Permission


Every permission may
also have a costPermissions

Every
permission
is a barrier

Please sir, I want
to license two more
CPUsOracle Twist

Proprietary licenses
severely limit
permissions

STOP

Difficult to determine what permissions you need at the startor what it will cost to acquire them

Even without the
cost factor, the
permissions alone
can be enough
to reduce the
likelihood of
success in
a start-up

Oliver Twist

Permissions

Every
permission
is a barrier

NIPMO take note!Oliver Twist

Barriers to
innovation

Starting
point

Knowledge

Permission

Cost


Start-up
costs

Scaling out
costs

Lock-in
costs

Malleability
costs

Abandonment
costs

Uncertainty
barrier

Cost

Barriers to
innovation


Starting
point

Knowledge

Permission

Cost

A wealth-creationperspective

Some recent major
software innovations

1995

Mark Zuckerberg

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Started poorUniversity
studentsWithoutFOSS
they would
not have
done itAll
acknowledge
both the
code and
its contained
knowledge

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush, image from Wikipedia

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and ta-da! the World Wide Web

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the first webserver fromWikipedia

When core things are free and open, there are no barriers to innovation.

When Bob Khan and I created TCP/IP and a bunch of us built a platform for internetworking, we did not patent the technologies used. We set TCP/IP free. Had we not done so, it is doubtful if the Internet as we know it today would have come into being.

The freedom given by Cerf and Khan, and Berners-Lee, together with Free Software made it possible.

The original Google servers, from Wikipedia

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn being awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom by President Bush, image from
Wikipedia







Wikipedia







Wikipedia







Layers of innovation built on Freedom

Consistency
of strategies

The
regulations
impact
FOSS

FOSS
lessons
for NIPMO

Software that is used or created in research projects is often
FOSSSoftware in research / innovation

From what I have seen, the IP regulations make no
provision for FOSSOr at least it is not
obvious how one deals with FOSS
in research

FOSSFOSSFOSSFOSS

PermissionProject
software

License

Regulations:
approval
afterward FOSS: up front
choices

Does this only apply to software?

May be consumed by one consumer without preventing simultaneous consumption by othersConsumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consump-tion by other consumers

Consistency
of strategies

The
regulations
impact
FOSS

FOSS
lessons
for NIPMO

Publicly
funded
science?

Africa produces 8.2 scientific research papers per million
peopleThe world produces 103
scientific research papers
per million peopleThe USA produces 690 and
Canada 723 scientific research papers per million people

Should we catalyze the growth of science in Africa?...or make it
harder?

Publicly
funded
science?

Territory size shows the proportion of the number of extra scientific papers that were published in 2001 compared with 1990, whose authors work there.

The output of scientific research
that is published in ways that
are only accessible to some people,
or that is locked up in the newly
altered form of patents that are
designed to withhold disclosure and
lengthen monopoly privileges.Secret science

The output of scientific research
that is published in ways that
are only accessible to some people,
or that is locked up in the newly
altered form of patents that are
designed to withhold disclosure and
lengthen monopoly privileges.Secret scienceSome secret
science is
probably
necessary ... but that
doesn't mean
all science
should be
secret

Free scienceResearch carried out for the public good (including knowledge growth), that is published in ways that are accessible to anyone with a networked computing device, and that can be freely built upon to create innovations that contribute to both public
and private good.

The
regulations
impact
FOSS

FOSS
lessons
for NIPMO

Consistency
of strategies

South African
National
FOSS policy

All new software developed for or by the South African Government will be based on open standards, adherent to FOSS principles, and licensed using a FOSS license where possible

Regulations & NIPMO procedures at odds with it

Epilogue

There are always barriers to innovation.The more barriers you create, the less innovation you will get.Every permission is a barrier.Secret science and patents are not the only way to foster innovation.Should we look carefully how public science can best serve the public good?Currently, we implicitly assume knowledge to be rivalrous, and our laws and policies are based on that implicit assumption.It has been a busy week for research. The UK Research Councils (RCUK) and HEFCE announced plans to work together on open access. JISCs Executive Secretary, Dr Malcolm Read, gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into peer review, alongside Mark Patterson from the Public Library of Science, (a leading open access publisher) and in Denmark, there have been meetings at the ministry with the European Commission holding a public hearing on access to scientific information next Monday in Luxembourg.

Epilogue

There are always barriers to innovation.The more barriers you create, the less innovation you will get.Every permission is a barrier.Secret science and patents are not the only way to foster innovation.Should we look carefully how public science can best serve the public good?Currently, we implicitly assume knowledge to be rivalrous, and our laws and policies are based on that implicit assumption.

This entrenches 20th Century thinking and business models, and is a major impediment to 21st Century innovation.

It has been a busy week for research. The UK Research Councils (RCUK) and HEFCE announced plans to work together on open access. JISCs Executive Secretary, Dr Malcolm Read, gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into peer review, alongside Mark Patterson from the Public Library of Science, (a leading open access publisher) and in Denmark, there have been meetings at the ministry with the European Commission holding a public hearing on access to scientific information next Monday in Luxembourg.

Epilogue



FOSS Free and
Open Source
Science

It has been a busy week for research. The UK Research Councils (RCUK) and HEFCE announced plans to work together on open access. JISCs Executive Secretary, Dr Malcolm Read, gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into peer review, alongside Mark Patterson from the Public Library of Science, (a leading open access publisher) and in Denmark, there have been meetings at the ministry with the European Commission holding a public hearing on access to scientific information next Monday in Luxembourg.

Epilogue



FOSS Free and
Open Source
Science

An opportunity
for leadership?It has been a busy week for research. The UK Research Councils (RCUK) and HEFCE announced plans to work together on open access. JISCs Executive Secretary, Dr Malcolm Read, gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into peer review, alongside Mark Patterson from the Public Library of Science, (a leading open access publisher) and in Denmark, there have been meetings at the ministry with the European Commission holding a public hearing on access to scientific information next Monday in Luxembourg.

In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.

Lawrence Lessig

wonder again

about

what we all
believe is true

Free and
Open
Science

Secret
Science

YINGYANG

But
how?

Who is looking after the interests
of those not here yet?

Free and
Open
Science

Secret
Science

YINGYANG

But
how?


Not us!

Free and
Open
Science

Secret
Science

YINGYANG

But
how?


Not us!

Should we be?

Attribution file: http://www.dkeats.com/usrfiles/users/
1563080430/attribution/attrib.txt

No
secret
science

With public funds

Muokkaa otsikon tekstimuotoa napsauttamalla

Muokkaa jsennyksen tekstimuotoa napsauttamallaToinen jsennystasoKolmas jsennystasoNeljs jsennystasoViides jsennystasoKuudes jsennystasoSeitsems jsennystasoKahdeksas jsennystasoYhdekss jsennystaso

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a research and innovation perspective on free and open source software (foss)

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