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Do you believe the tech industry is so different with its walled gardens, proprietary software, and closed protocols built off of decades of publicly funded res

Do you believe the tech industry is so different with its walled gardens, proprietary software, and closed protocols built off of decades of publicly funded research and infrastructure? Why? Is it contradictory to support an industry which does that while supporting this? Would you be for the liberation of Google's property?

dnautics 9y ago
It's categorically different. The arrow is in the opposite direction. The tech industry's private siloed stacks are built on top of that public infrastructure and are an elaboration of it. Whereas the publishing industry's walled gardens are the foundation upon which public research is built.
- amelius 9y ago
  It's the same. Publishers are the "gateway" to science, and they have cornered that market, using publicly funded science. Google is the "gateway" to search, built largely using publicly funded science. Facebook is the gateway to online social interaction, and is again built largely using publicly funded science. Et cetera.
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    The content in Google and much of it in Facebook is discoverable via those services, but exist outside of it. Publishers are not mere discovery services - they are gatekeepers, not portals.
  - dnautics 9y ago
    "built using publicly funded..." Is not the relevant direction. You'll come to absurd conclusions. A building in San Francisco is literally built using publicly funded safety science, and materials science, etc. Should we then force it to be free to access?
    - amelius 9y ago
      A building is not information, in the sense that you cannot freely copy it.
- rmchugh 9y ago
  Well, things are a bit different in the US where your universities are privately funded but in many countries the publishing industry publishes research from researchers employed by state funded institutions and sells the research back to libraries in state funded institutions. So, really they're being doubly financed by the state.
pcnix 9y ago
I think the argument is that the science building the underlying infrastructure is public and free to share. And that is a fundamental part of the reason for it reaching the size/scale that it is right now.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Publicly funded research should without reservation be free and available to all (if that's what the author chooses). I say that as someone who hopes to publish within the next 18 months. Not sure it's going to be any good, but it will be free. The big publishers are public parasites that make money off the work of other people and through controlling information and progress. The quicker they go into the dustbin of history the better. My issue is less with the argument and more with the general sentiment. I don't understand how we can get outraged that companies like Elsevier operate this way when it is fundamentally the same closed model that is so prevalent in tech. I don't imagine as an industry we are so self-unaware, contradictory, or (to use a less nice word) hypocritical, but the sentiment doesn't match with the actions of this industry. where does the disconnect come from? We celebrate piracy in this thread, but if these same tactics were turned on almost any company represented on HN, it would not be seen as a virtue.
  - xamuel 9y ago
    >fundamentally the same closed model prevalent in tech They're totally different. If tech were like academic publishing, software would be developed in publicly-subsidized studios and then given, for free, to for-profit distributors. These distributors would play no significant part in the development of the software, but would happily charge the public an arm and a leg for any usage of it.
- ggm 9y ago
  Yes. I don't buy "information wants to be free" but I do believe "the internet worked better than the others because it was open spec and free" (in no sense without cost)
  - 9y ago
ggm 9y ago
There are moments in what google do where it's explicitly in the public domain. QUIC is now in IETF process. Substantial parts of IPv6 are done in IETF. Google public DNS is in IETF. I believe Google docs and sheets uses open doc standards. There are moments which are not. I think their smarts behind ad placement logic and the ML derived stuff may be trade secret not patent. I believe their use of patents acquired through Motorola was defensive not offensive but I disliked that move. Google exploit first mover advantage and category killer scale as much as IPR. If they used IPR as much as apple do, to defend the indefensible (slide to open for goodness sake) I'd repudiate that. I don't entirely like Google. In this space is see them as a lesser evil than say SCO or Oracle

dnautics 9y ago

It's categorically different. The arrow is in the opposite direction. The tech industry's private siloed stacks are built on top of that public infrastructure and are an elaboration of it. Whereas the publishing industry's walled gardens are the foundation upon which public research is built.

amelius 9y ago
It's the same. Publishers are the "gateway" to science, and they have cornered that market, using publicly funded science. Google is the "gateway" to search, built largely using publicly funded science. Facebook is the gateway to online social interaction, and is again built largely using publicly funded science. Et cetera.
- Chris2048 9y ago
  The content in Google and much of it in Facebook is discoverable via those services, but exist outside of it. Publishers are not mere discovery services - they are gatekeepers, not portals.
- dnautics 9y ago
  "built using publicly funded..." Is not the relevant direction. You'll come to absurd conclusions. A building in San Francisco is literally built using publicly funded safety science, and materials science, etc. Should we then force it to be free to access?
  - amelius 9y ago
    A building is not information, in the sense that you cannot freely copy it.
rmchugh 9y ago
Well, things are a bit different in the US where your universities are privately funded but in many countries the publishing industry publishes research from researchers employed by state funded institutions and sells the research back to libraries in state funded institutions. So, really they're being doubly financed by the state.

pcnix 9y ago

I think the argument is that the science building the underlying infrastructure is public and free to share. And that is a fundamental part of the reason for it reaching the size/scale that it is right now.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
Publicly funded research should without reservation be free and available to all (if that's what the author chooses). I say that as someone who hopes to publish within the next 18 months. Not sure it's going to be any good, but it will be free. The big publishers are public parasites that make money off the work of other people and through controlling information and progress. The quicker they go into the dustbin of history the better. My issue is less with the argument and more with the general sentiment. I don't understand how we can get outraged that companies like Elsevier operate this way when it is fundamentally the same closed model that is so prevalent in tech. I don't imagine as an industry we are so self-unaware, contradictory, or (to use a less nice word) hypocritical, but the sentiment doesn't match with the actions of this industry. where does the disconnect come from? We celebrate piracy in this thread, but if these same tactics were turned on almost any company represented on HN, it would not be seen as a virtue.
- xamuel 9y ago
  >fundamentally the same closed model prevalent in tech They're totally different. If tech were like academic publishing, software would be developed in publicly-subsidized studios and then given, for free, to for-profit distributors. These distributors would play no significant part in the development of the software, but would happily charge the public an arm and a leg for any usage of it.
ggm 9y ago
Yes. I don't buy "information wants to be free" but I do believe "the internet worked better than the others because it was open spec and free" (in no sense without cost)
- 9y ago

ggm 9y ago

There are moments in what google do where it's explicitly in the public domain. QUIC is now in IETF process. Substantial parts of IPv6 are done in IETF. Google public DNS is in IETF. I believe Google docs and sheets uses open doc standards. There are moments which are not. I think their smarts behind ad placement logic and the ML derived stuff may be trade secret not patent. I believe their use of patents acquired through Motorola was defensive not offensive but I disliked that move. Google exploit first mover advantage and category killer scale as much as IPR. If they used IPR as much as apple do, to defend the indefensible (slide to open for goodness sake) I'd repudiate that. I don't entirely like Google. In this space is see them as a lesser evil than say SCO or Oracle