Is there a bright future for open software projects?

[Kyler Laird]

donnal at donnal.net (Donnal Walter) writes:

>I have wondered why open-source software is not more common in
>academia. The BSD and MIT licenses (just to name two) demonstrate that
>universities are indeed common producers of open-source software, but
>I am surprised that the academic world does not insist on
>open-sourcing all software produced therein.

It would be nice to think that universities are just interested
in serving the public good, but these days they are "industry
partners."  Just as education has given way to students being
trained to operate software that industry "demands" (and is
typically proprietary), any software ("intellectual property")
produced by a university that has value must be handed off to a
department that will evaluate how it can squeeze some money
from it through licensing.

There's a great quote that I wish I could find right now.  It's
from a University of California spokesperson and essentially
says "If we'd known this Internet thing was going to be such a
hit, we wouldn't have released it to the public."

--kyler