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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

by 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)
- bewo001 9y ago
  That's true. ITU-T standards (eg for ATM and OSI protocols) used to be really expensive. Buy one 8 page document for 50$, realize that this is mostly a collection of references to other documents, keep buying until you have all the information. This takes a lot of time, as the documents aren't available online. Or you go to a university library with a notebook ("making a copy is strictly forbidden"). It was a system that shut out small companies. Or you implement IETF RfCs. There's an FTP server with all standards documents. If you have just email but no Internet yet (think uucp mail or bbs), there's a service where you can request documents to be sent to you.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  Nobody ever gives the full version of that quote: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." Brand wasn't a naive utopian; he acutely understood the conflicts that the internet would bring about.
  - jokermatt999 9y ago
    To save others from panicked searching, Stewart Brand still is not a naive utopian; he has not died.

by pcnix 9y ago

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)

bewo001 9y ago
That's true. ITU-T standards (eg for ATM and OSI protocols) used to be really expensive. Buy one 8 page document for 50$, realize that this is mostly a collection of references to other documents, keep buying until you have all the information. This takes a lot of time, as the documents aren't available online. Or you go to a university library with a notebook ("making a copy is strictly forbidden"). It was a system that shut out small companies. Or you implement IETF RfCs. There's an FTP server with all standards documents. If you have just email but no Internet yet (think uucp mail or bbs), there's a service where you can request documents to be sent to you.
jdietrich 9y ago
Nobody ever gives the full version of that quote: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." Brand wasn't a naive utopian; he acutely understood the conflicts that the internet would bring about.
- jokermatt999 9y ago
  To save others from panicked searching, Stewart Brand still is not a naive utopian; he has not died.