[A2k] Harnessing the benefits of openness

[Ian Brown]

http://dooooooom.blogspot.com/2006/04/harnessing-benefits-of-openness.html

Harnessing the benefits of openness

The Committee for Economic Development, a major-league US business
lobby, has published a hard-hitting report on the advantages of
openness. The report's authors include such well-known communists as
Citigroup's CTO and IBM's Senior VP for Research. Their key recommendations=
:

     * Because of the advantages of open standards, the Council
recommends that governments encourage the development and use of open
standards through processes as open to participation and contribution as
possible. The Council believes that the participation of civil society
would be beneficial in the formation of standards with important social
consequences. The Council also recommends that the results of
government-supported research be readily available for inclusion in open
standards, as they have been in areas such as grid computing.

     * The Council believes that, rather than replacing one another,
proprietary software and open source software will co-exist, with each
playing an appropriate role in the information and communication
technologies (ICT) environment. The Council opposes any requirement
forcing governments to make purchasing decisions based on the licensing
system used. It recommends that the U.S. government not advocate
purchases based on any particular licensing scheme=97proprietary or open.

     * The Council believes there are certain critical functions of
government that should be conducted solely with interoperable
technology; in these critical areas, no citizen should be required to
use the hardware or software of any particular vendor. The Council
recommends that the United States support such interoperability
requirements in international procurement as well. The Council also
recommends that international agreements entered into by the United
States regarding intellectual property should reflect the nation=92s
historically balanced intellectual property regime reflecting the
interests of both first and follow on innovators.

     * In order to foster open innovation, the Council recommends not
only that the NIH should continue their efforts to expand the
dissemination of the research they support, but also that other
federally funded, unclassified research should be made broadly
available. Consistent with the position it has taken in its earlier
reports, the Council recommends that any legislation or regulation
regarding intellectual property rights be weighed with a presumption
against the granting of new rights. The burden of proof should be on
proponents of new rights to demonstrate with rigorous analysis the
necessity of such an extension, because of the benefits to society of
further innovation through greater access to technology.

     * Finally, the Council suggests that the National Science
Foundation (NSF) fund research into alternative compensation methods,
similar to those created to facilitate the growth of radio, to reward
creators of digital information products and accommodate the changes
brought about by the digitization and growth of the Internet.