Re:[Patents] On Some SCO letters

["Roberto Micarelli" <mi.ro@iol.it>]

This analisys looks definitely right to me.
In this period I'm approaching with the study of the story of the Internet 
and there's one constant in the process: the convergence of people from 
different places, sitting around a table and discussing about the best, 
shared approach to adopt. Often for no direct profit. If everybody had taken 
apart and proprietary his knowledge we wouldn't today stay here, writing 
emails each other and making money with our added-value.
There seems free-software view to be coeherent with the history of the media 
that we are using.

Regards, Roberto Micarelli


>
> (Forwarded from NY Fair Use discussion list)
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay Sulzberger <jays@panix.com>
> Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 19:49:33 -0500 (EST)
> Subject: [fairuse-talk] [ma-linux] SCO letters (fwd)
>
>
>
>  ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>  Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:28:43 -0500
>  From: Przemek Klosowski <przemek@tux.org>
>  To: ma-linux@gwyn.tux.org
>  Subject: [ma-linux] SCO letters
>
>  Slashdot published recently more info on SCO communications related
> to their Linux lawsuit. I wanted to share some thougths with you on
> that.
>
>  I always maintained that there is an analogy between the software
> technology and scientific knowledge. Just like science is the basis
> for our civilization, software underlies the expanding digital sphere
> of our lives. The development model of both science and sofware can
> vary between proprietary and public, and the society has to make a
> policy choice about supporting the right mix.
>
>  Even though scientific and technological knowledge started as
> proprietary, we as society made a historical choice, dating back to
> the age of Enlightenment, to develop knowledge in a collegial, public
> fashion. This model, of course, works rather well, and no one 
> seriously argues that it should be rolled back to some kind of
> proprietary science development.
>
>  Similarly, I argue that software, whose importance tracks the growing
> influence of computing on our lives, must be developed in a public
> model; the Free Software is currently the closest approach, which
> eventually will be augmented by some sort of peer-reviewed public
> commitment, just as is the case for scientific research.
>
>  The analogy of software and science is not perfect; but I argue that,
> firstly, the negative effects of closed software are almost identical
> to negative effects of closed knowledge: it forces duplicate work,
> creates artificial monopolies, and slows down progress. Secondly,
> because software _IS_ the infrastructure of the digital age, there is
> the issue of public interest, and the development model must
> accomodate that.
>
>  In this context, the strategy of SCO in their Linux lawsuit is
> especially retrograde. Their position, as laid out in their recently
> issued letters
>         http://sco.tuxrocks.com/Docs/IBM/Doc-41-I.pdf
>
>  seems to counter the very idea of a public stake in technical
> knowledge. It occurred to me to modify their argument,
> substituting 'human knowledge' for 'software'. Here's what we'd get:
>
> > As you may know, the development process for public scientific
> > knowledge has differed substantially from the development process
> > for other enterprise scientific research. Commercial research is
> > built by carefully selected and screened teams of scientists
> > working to build proprietary scientific results. The process is
> > designed to monitor the security and ownership of intellectual
> > property rights associated with the knowledge.
>
> > By contrast, much of human scientific knowledge has been built
> > from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown scientists,
> > each contributing a small scientific discovery. There is no
> > mechanism inherent in the public science development process to
> > assure that intellectual property rights, confidentiality or
> > security are protected.  The public science process does not
> > prevent inclusion of knowledge that has been stolen outright, or
> > developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts.
>
> Put this way, their argument is nonsensical, and would find no support
> in anyone even a tiny bit familiar with the scientific process, which
> arguably forms the basis of our civilization.
>
>               Przemek Klosowski, Ph.D. <przemek@tux.org>
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