this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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*Data rights limitations affecting ~~NASA~~ technology development
Privatized knowledge is bottlenecking all technology.
The internet runs on open source software and it's what powers modern world wide communications.
If we opened up more technology and technological knowledge this way .... we're be sending our first mission and human crew to Jupiter by now.
Instead we take up all our human knowledge, experience and ability to prop up a bunch of billionaire bank accounts.
We hold back our collective progress just to allow a few of us the privilege of being able to say that they are temporary masters of our little human universe.
Historically removal of all privatized knowledge removes the largest incentive to create new knowledge.
Nations with high intellectual property rights show the most advances. This is even with the benefit that low intellectual property respecting nations get immediately up-to-date knowledge when a high intellectual property nation releases it.
Some public and some private (for a time) knowledge has proven to yield the most technological advances. I'm a big believer in my tax money funding basic research (fundamental physics and biological research) while private industry selects from that to build on and develop new specific technologies which are private for a limited time.
That doesn't make sense .... the Open Source Software movement is basically what started the technological explosion in the 70s and 80s and it was basically the basis of which Microsoft and Apple got their start ... sure it was a tech people with day jobs and institutions with money that did it all but they did it mostly without an awareness of how to monetize it ... and that period was also the basis of where Linux came out of which went on to build systems that power our modern internet. The majority of all that work was built by individuals who's only incentive was to create new things and ideas .... often without thinking about profit or income. The idea of profit usually came after the technology was established and people could better understand how to monetize, privatize and regulate it all for themselves.
I get it ... we all need money to live ... and we need to be rewarded for our work ... but those needs shouldn't be taken to such extremes as to lock away knowledge and monetize everything while slowing down progress that others could potentially create if they had access.
You have a chunk of the history very wrong. You have a couple pieces of history that are close, but in the wrong order, and with attributing the impact of those events wrong.
Examples:
You're cherry picking any OSS notable events without attribution to all of the private work and commercial software that enabled it to occur.
How much software will you write for free? How are you going to feed yourself and your family if all of your efforts are just given away?
Again, without the IP protections there aren't the resources to write everything for free. Some? Certainly. There is some government and corporate support. I addressed that above. The big innovation is likely going to come from small or large groups doing the work to create the thing to personally benefit.
There are nations that do what you're suggesting historically. Look at cold war era Russia and China. Software written was mostly done by the state. There wasn't private enterprise doing it. What software innovations did you see coming out of those countries at the time?