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Good to see this change, but I wish people wouldn't go down this road to begin with. Speaking as someone who sits in industry now, I have found it almost impos

Good to see this change, but I wish people wouldn't go down this road to begin with. Speaking as someone who sits in industry now, I have found it almost impossible to successfully conclude negotiations between not-very-interested academics who don't really understand how licensing works (and the staff who supposedly help them) and a big, paranoid company. When you put some rando commercial license or complicated terms on your (likely tax-payer funded) data or software, what it essentially requires from big companies is a extremely expensive legal review to see what we would be signing up for. This review might be considerably more expensive than the amount being asked for the data/software. What's more, if a small company signs up for this, and ever wants to be acquired by a big company, the review may not happen (small companies and startups are usually more relaxed about this stuff) but will have to take place during acquisition. Bonus points for when the academics or their representatives wander away mid-discussion. As a final bonus, I have seen our commercial competitors in this area just essentially fund university researchers to do thinly veiled advertising by accessing the same dataset for an "academic" paper. Meanwhile I sit on my hands respecting "the latter and spirit" of the law.

glangdale 9y ago
oops "the letter and spirit" of the law.
anjc 9y ago
What are these not-very-interested academics expecting? For you to agree to whatever commercial license or...? I don't get why you'd expect academic institutions to offer you permissive licenses though, when in all likelihood you have your own complicated partnership/IP/licensing processes for industry partners. Why is it ok for them but not for you? And what difference does it make that their research is tax-payer funded? That doesn't make it free. That means that the institute has an obligation to make returns and, academic research being somewhat open, lock down IP rights with certainty.
folli 9y ago
As someone also on the industry side of things, what would be your recommended solution to the problem? On the one hand we don't want the legal mess that licensing entails, on the other hand I'm absolutely in favor of reimbursing the academics in some way. But how? Some new, standardized, industry accepted commercial license (who will invest the required legal effort to come up with such a license that's accepted by both sides?)? A concept based on voluntary donations (good luck getting that by the finance department)?
anjc 9y ago
Follow up to my other comment...I just noticed from your bio that you work at Intel, and now have to lol at you complaining about academics trying to license commercial products. I presume you don't mind when tax-funds are directed towards academic R&D when it's conducted for Intel (and plenty of it is in Europe) :)
xfer 9y ago
Regarding "tax-payer funded data/software" From the blog: > I believed then, and still do now, that it’s right that institutions that support software development should benefit from its commercial use (UC Berkeley receives 2/3 of the royalties for commercially licensed products), that students are entitled to renumeration for software engineering work that does not directly support of their own research goals, and that funds are needed to support specialized personnel who can maintain/improve code and service user requests. Also i believe, most students in academia are under-paid.
ballenf 9y ago
It's off-topic but a very similar argument exists for why the Facebook license + patent type arrangements(1) can cause problems for large companies or small startups that may want to be acquired later. And I too wish that the Facebook-of-the-future don't go down this road. Number two on devs wishlist should be transparency about exactly which patents cover the code at hand. IMHO. I draw the analogy due to the similarities of "open source" and government funded findings. Another area where these issues arise is charitable contributions that come with strings attached (like naming a building or agreeing to continue a certain program). People like getting full recognition for the act of generosity without the cost of their strings being acknowledged or subtracted from the total. (1) The reality of Facebook is that it's unlikely to ever be an issue, but if the arrangement becomes more commonplace the open source community could become a minefield of unquantifiable risks. I realize this is a slippery-slope argument and is thus easy to overstate.

glangdale 9y ago

oops "the letter and spirit" of the law.

anjc 9y ago

What are these not-very-interested academics expecting? For you to agree to whatever commercial license or...? I don't get why you'd expect academic institutions to offer you permissive licenses though, when in all likelihood you have your own complicated partnership/IP/licensing processes for industry partners. Why is it ok for them but not for you? And what difference does it make that their research is tax-payer funded? That doesn't make it free. That means that the institute has an obligation to make returns and, academic research being somewhat open, lock down IP rights with certainty.

folli 9y ago

As someone also on the industry side of things, what would be your recommended solution to the problem? On the one hand we don't want the legal mess that licensing entails, on the other hand I'm absolutely in favor of reimbursing the academics in some way. But how? Some new, standardized, industry accepted commercial license (who will invest the required legal effort to come up with such a license that's accepted by both sides?)? A concept based on voluntary donations (good luck getting that by the finance department)?

anjc 9y ago

Follow up to my other comment...I just noticed from your bio that you work at Intel, and now have to lol at you complaining about academics trying to license commercial products. I presume you don't mind when tax-funds are directed towards academic R&D when it's conducted for Intel (and plenty of it is in Europe) :)

xfer 9y ago

Regarding "tax-payer funded data/software" From the blog: > I believed then, and still do now, that it’s right that institutions that support software development should benefit from its commercial use (UC Berkeley receives 2/3 of the royalties for commercially licensed products), that students are entitled to renumeration for software engineering work that does not directly support of their own research goals, and that funds are needed to support specialized personnel who can maintain/improve code and service user requests. Also i believe, most students in academia are under-paid.

ballenf 9y ago

It's off-topic but a very similar argument exists for why the Facebook license + patent type arrangements(1) can cause problems for large companies or small startups that may want to be acquired later. And I too wish that the Facebook-of-the-future don't go down this road. Number two on devs wishlist should be transparency about exactly which patents cover the code at hand. IMHO. I draw the analogy due to the similarities of "open source" and government funded findings. Another area where these issues arise is charitable contributions that come with strings attached (like naming a building or agreeing to continue a certain program). People like getting full recognition for the act of generosity without the cost of their strings being acknowledged or subtracted from the total. (1) The reality of Facebook is that it's unlikely to ever be an issue, but if the arrangement becomes more commonplace the open source community could become a minefield of unquantifiable risks. I realize this is a slippery-slope argument and is thus easy to overstate.