Re: Corporate Welfare: was Re: RMS's note to am-info regarding software development models...

[Eric Bennett <ericb@pobox.com>]

James Love wrote:

> ..... Consider also the pharmaceutical industry.  Try, for example, to
> name a single cancer drug that was not developed with public R&D
> subsidies.    Jamie

But these research results are hardly analogous to GPLed software.  If
they were, there would be a restriction that says: "If you use the
results of publicly funded research as the basis for developing a drug,
you must make the results of your research publicly available and usable
by anyone under the same terms through which the previous results were
made available to you."  Then the drug companies wouldn't be able to
patent their drugs, and other companies could make generic drugs
immediately.

The actual situation seems a lot closer to the style BSD license, where
anybody can do whatever they want with the results of the research.


-- 
Eric Bennett ( ericb@pobox.com ; http://www.pobox.com/~ericb )
Department of Chemistry, Cornell University
377 S.T. Olin Chemistry Lab

Mr. Gates needs a memory upgrade.
-Mitchell Pettit, Executive Director, ProComp