MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-03-27 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] NIH/NSF projects and the GPL
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Dear Mr Miller
I've looked over the correspondence between you and Richard, and also
looked over email that you sent to me, and while I don't see a specific
request for my help with any specific action, I'll give you my overall
view of the topics and the means by which you can quickly be made to understand
Richard's position and its consequences to the issues you raise about
government, and specifically NIH/NFS funded research and software developmemt
work.
First, let me preface these comments by saying that I don't speak for
Mr. Stallman, and that our views are substantially different in a number
of areas. However, Richard and I share the same goals and specific
philosophies with regard to creative works in the general, and publically
funded works in the specific.
Richard started the Free Software movement based specifically on the priniciple
that in a free society, cultural works, and specifically computer programs,
must be free for security and participation of individuals. In a society
increasingly dependent on digital systems for our daily living, guarantees
of freedom with the code base is the only means of assuring individual
freedom, the cornerstone of every free society. It is not the supporters
of the Free Software Foundation contention that this is an economic issue,
but a political question, which today is as critical to our freedom as the
concept of A Free Press was in the 18th Century. All other economic, copyright
and business issues aside, this is a self-evident truth. Freedom requires
this level of transparency.
As the importance and subsequent benifits of the Free Software philosophy
became more evident in the late 1990's, others, trying to capitalize on the
economic benifits of Software Freedom, essentially tried to water down the
essential doctrims digital freedom, tried to repackage the core values
in order to make it more palipatable for businesses with economic stakes
in the currently accepted "intellectual property" regime, and I use that term
reluctantly and with full knowldge that it is ultimately a meaningless
legal concept which promotes disinformaion about the facts of very nature of
creative works.
The problem with the "Open Source" movement, is that it ultimately rests
on arguements which can, and in fact, have been swept aside, according to
the economic needs of the businesses and corperations which control the
legal copyrights to works. And in fact, the NIH and NFS are examples of
what happens when philosophies similar to "Open Source" are used to
protect what is actually human rights issues.
As a Pharmacist and Computer programmer, I'm very interested in what happens
with government sponsored research. Aside from the other overr-arching
priciples which I've enumerated above, the sole reason for the government to
use taxpayers money for medical and scientific research is that such research
would not be otherwise funded or encouraged without the direct infussion of
taxpayer dollars into the said research, and that furthermore, such research
is necessesary for the publics good. Therefore, there is no economic or
business arguments which can be made, outside of say national security for
projects similar to the Manhattan Project, either for or against the limitation
of access or the aquisition of government funded research by issuing any
monopoly, whether that be copyrights, patents or any other legal limitations,
to such funded works. Any such intervention is defactually contraindicated
with the governments intervention in the research in the first place.
As such, it is not so much that a $25 fee to aquire copies of research that is
offense, if that is the money needed by NFS or NIH to cover costs of providing
the information or helping to fund the research, but the limitation of sharing
that information freely with all members of the scientific communinity once
it is obtained by individuals of the public. Any frankly, I know it is not
such a great idea for cancer patients to be baseing their opinions and
evaluations of treatments on primary research. Despite public misconceptions,
these studies are not conclusive, understandable, or indicate any treatment
options. It could take hundreds of studies to make a foundation for conclusive
medical evidence which should be used for actually treatment. These patients
get enough misinformation as it is.
In this regard, I hope I've helped clarify the items being discussed, and I
would be happy to help you in the future. In fact, I'm working on a
Pharmacy Free Software program which NIH might have an interest in, which
will likely save millions of lives from misdosing by enabling Pharmacists to
better have better oversite of patient drug therapy based on the patients
health status at the time of treatment.
Yours Truly
Ruben Safir RPh
--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
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