dikini.net

"Publicly funded R&D projects which aim to produce software outputs shall specify a proposed software exploitation route at the start of the project. At the completion of the project, the software shall be exploited either commercially or within an academic community or as OSS."[ Open Source Software Policy ]

Furthermore, it is recognised that there is a need to maximise returns on, and benefits from, public investment in publicly funded R&D software. Government policy helps achieve this by making clear that the 'exploitation route' for such publicly funded R&D software should be chosen with this objective in mind.

The policy on exploiting R&D software does not apply to software developed in areas of defence, national security or law enforcement or software developed by trading funds for reasons of national security and to protect government commercial interests.
Open-it-projects - epetition reply

This response essentially confirms the status quo. Yes, there is a government open source software policy , but that policy allows, as cited above, the option of using a free license, as opposed to requires. The two are not equal. Even accepting that defence concerns should be taken into account, which is a debatable issue on its own right knowledge is knowledge after all, the reply is unsatisfactory. Not that one would expect otherwise...

So why do I think the response is unsatisfactory? Simple. I believe that any product , including the knowledge to reproduce that product, funded by the public purse, must be available to the public at no cost, with no restrictions. Ideally it should enter the public domain, to protect the intellectual investment free licenses can be considered as fair and just. I believe the system must be fair for the tax payer, not any other body. That is why commercial or any other interests should not be taken into account. Keeping it simple and fair means that the rules will be understood and followed.

So point by point.

Up until now I was avoiding putting my thoughts on 'paper', but here we are. My instincts simply say Restricting knowledge distribution and use is wrong. Some might say this makes me a communist devil, anarchist or whatever other epithet is currently cool in their circles. Let's avoid that for the time being. These scribbles are probably not 100% correct. But the ideas are what matters anyway. And will you find a difference from a bird's eye view?

Obviously this is a strong social issue, as in it reflects a growing concern of the society as a whole. The society as the human beings represented by a state, like UK, USA, France, Bulgaria, or groups of states like EU, UN, ... Some long time ago patents were introduced by the British Crown in order to give a temporary monopoly to inventors, so that they can protect and exploit their knowhow, while making the knowledge (their knowhow) public. This was a significant social issue. This way knowledge was immediately becoming exploitable by the society. People could benefit from the abstract knowledge or the principles behind the patentable invention. These principles were not patentable at the time, only some of their defined applications - the invention, machines, products etc... The monopoly lasted for a relatively short period of time. Longer than it would take at the time to reverse engineer an invetion and set up production of a competitive product, but not by too much. This is important, since timescales, im my opinion, are important when trying to rationalise the costs of patents to a society.