Nature Biotechnology has just published an article on the perceived effects of intellectual property protection for biological research. The article involved a detailed survey of academic agricultural biologists on their perception of IP and research. The authors' primary conclusion: Scientists believe that, contrary to the current consensus, proliferation of IP […]
Post Tagged with: "open source"
Quebec Group Sues Provincial Government for Failing to Consider Open Source Alternatives
FACIL, a Quebec-based open source software advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit against the Quebec government for failing to consider open source software alternatives. FACIL argues in its filing [unofficial English translation] that the government spends millions on proprietary software without objectively evaluating open source alternatives that could enhance the […]
Canadian Software Innovation Alliance Launches
The Canadian Software Innovation Alliance, which brings together many Canadian open source software companies, has publicly launched with a letter to Industry Minister Jim Prentice warning against a DMCA-style approach to anti-circumvention legislation.
Reading Materials
There are two new European Commission-commissioned reports worth checking out. First, there is a lengthy study [PDF] on the economic impact of open source software that provides numbers that should get the attention of politicians and policy makers worldwide. The study estimates that it would cost 12 billion euros (over C$18 billion) to reproduce the same software code of current quality FLOSS applications. Moreover, the number of new software applications is doubling every 18 – 24 months. It further finds an 800 million euro voluntary contribution by software programmers. The industry impact is breathtaking with estimates that firms representing 263 billion euro in revenue and 565,000 jobs have invested 1.2 billion euro in FLOSS software that is then made freely available. In short, the direct and indirect economic impact is very significant and must surely form a more integral part of any national economic and ICT strategy.
The EC has also released a study[PDF] completed by the exceptional Institute for Information Law on the harmonization of European copyright law.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
BoingBoing points to two noteworthy developments – EMI in Europe has sworn off copy-protected CDs, while Second Life has released its source code under the GPL.