there is more to innovation than secret science and patents!

Opportunities to foster
innovation based on Free and
Open Source Software (FOSS)

There is more to innovation than
secret science and patents!

Prof Derek W. KeatsDeputy Vice Chancellor
(Knowledge & Information Management)
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
http://[email protected]

What do I mean
by innovation?

Having a new idea

Implementing it in technology

Taking it through to operation

a business

a new organizational or
business process

a new product or service

something that changes the
way we do things

Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Regulations (April)

disappointingly modern for a
post-modern world

one dimensional

Freedom 1 and Freedom 3 require the source code

The four freedoms of
Free Software

Barriers to
innovation

Starting
point

Knowledge

Permission

Successful innovation

Cost

No such thing as scratch

Operating systems

Compilers

Programming
languages

Core
applications


Operating systems

Databases

Webserver

Compilers

Programming
languages

Scripting languages

Frameworks

Digital
object store

Libraries

Core
applications

Version management

Scalability tools

Load balance


Operating systems

Databases

Webserver

Compilers

Programming
languages

Scripting languages

Frameworks

Digital
object store

Libraries

Core
applications

Version management

Desktop applications

Web applications

Integrated
development
environment

Embedded
environments

Testing tools

Scalability tools

Load balance

Deployment tools

Complete applications

Communities

use

study

adapt

Collaboration
tools

Built on a stack of FOSS applications and libraries using
a suite of FOSS development and collaboration tools

Fedoragstreamer
GNU/Linux PHPMySQL PEAROpen
OfficeSWF
toolsCURLChisimbaFFmpegThe stack

JavaPythonFlashOpen
fireRED5JavascriptjQueryextJSJabberCross platform

RESTful APIAjaxMashableXMPPMobile phoneOnline package
management

Version 4 will be
fully distributed & cloud-ready

prototypeSWORDOpen
Zoom

software
engineering

software
engineering

software
engineering

software
engineering

Knowledge

When you have an idea, limited
coding experience, and few resources,
how do you learn to code it?

Free Software as a learning
resourceDissect

Study

Use

Community as a learning
resource

Permissions

Every permission is a barrier

Proprietary licenses severely limit permissions

Every permission may also have a cost

It may be extremely difficult to determine what permissions you need early in a projector what it will cost to acquire them

Even without the cost factor, the
permissions alone can be enough
to reduce the likelihood of success

Please sir, I want
to license two more
CPUs

Cost

Start-up costs

Scaling out costs

Lock-in costs

Maleability costs

Some recent major
software innovations

Started in parents garage in Durbanville in 1995

Still a student at UCT when he started experimenting

VeriSign acquired Thawte for US$575 million in 1999

Started Canonical and Ubuntu GNU/Linux to give back to FOSS.

Some recent major

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University

Maxed out their credit cards to buy hardware

Became a private company on September 4, 1998

Larry & Sergey #5 on Forbes list in 1997 with a net worth of $18.5 billion each

Some recent major

Launched Facebook from Harvard University dorm room on February 4, 2004

Time magazine named Zuckerberg as one of The World's Most Influential People of 2008

Market value of $15 billion in 2007

Mark Zuckerberg

Scarcity

Abundance

Proprietary softwareFree softwareThe scarcity is entirely artificially maintained

ScarcityAbundance

PermissionEverything is forbidden unless it is permittedEverything is permitted unless it is forbidden

Social modelPaternalism ("We know what's best")Egalitarianism ("You know what's best")

Profit planBusiness model drives investmentLets do it, we'll figure something out

Decision processTop down, rule driven

Bottom up, experimental

Organizational
structureCommand and control, planned and managedOut of control, unplanned,
perpetual beta

CostFull cost of all ingredients, permission costsMarginal costs,
business process only

KnowledgeProtected, controlled, secretShared, freely available, no secrets

Starting pointClose to the bottomClose to the top

-- modified after Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price

ProductProcessModelCharacteristics

Use existingThe organisation uses existing FOSS tools, such as GNU/Linux, and does not contribute to their development.

Adapt existingThe organisation makes minor adaptations of exist-ing tools to serve its own peculiar business needs.

Sponsor a projectThe organisation sponsors an external agency to create a tool on its behalf, and may assist that agency to locate other sponsors who could join the project.

Join a projectThe organisation puts resources, either money or a software developer, into an existing project.

Create a projectThe organisation creates a new project, puts its own developers onto writing the software and seeks other sponsors or others who may join the project.

FOSS strategies

ProductProcessModelCharacteristics






FOSS strategies

Early
innovationModelCharacteristics






FOSS strategies

FOSS strategies

Use

Adapt

Join

Sponsor

Create

Strength of ecosystem

Low barriers
to innovation

Does this only apply to software?

May be consumed by one consumer without preventing simultaneous consumption by othersConsumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consump-tion by other consumers

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn being awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom by President Bush, image from
Wikipedia

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and ta-da! the World Wide Web

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the first webserver fromWikipedia

When core things are free and open, there are no barriers to innovation.

When Bob Khan and I created TCP/IP and a bunch of us built a platform for internetworking, we did not patent the technologies used. We set TCP/IP free. Had we not done so, it is doubtful if the Internet as we know it today would have come into being.

The freedom given by Cerf and Khan, and Berners-Lee, together with Free Software made it possible.

The original Google servers, from Wikipedia

Wikipedia







Wikipedia







Wikipedia







Bioinformatics

the open sharing of the algorithms and methods used to make new observations from biological data drove the explosion in bioinformatics

Data are often openly shared according to FOSS type licenses

Software is often FOSS and shared as well

Activation energy

Publicly
funded
science?

The world produces 103
scientific research papers
per million people

The USA produces 690 and
Canada 723 scientific research papers per million people

Africa produces 8.2 scientific research papers per million
people

We need to reduce barriers to
innovation, not increase them

The output of scientific research that is only published in ways that are only accessible to some people, or that is locked up in the newly altered form of patents that are designed to withhold disclosure and lengthen monopoly privileges.Secret science

Final message

There are always barriers to innovation.

The more barriers you create, the less innovation you will get.

Every permission is a barrier.

Secret science and patents nouveau are not the only way to foster innovation.

Should we not look carefully how public science can best serve the public good?

Currently, we implicitly assume knowledge to be rivalrous, and our laws and policies are based on that implicit assumption.

Don't create barriers, remove them.

Don't control, facilitate!

Say no to
secret science
with public funds!

http://twitpic.com/qnhpo

Dedicated to the public
domain. You may use it
for any purpose without
permission or attribution.

Attribution file: http://www.dkeats.com/usrfiles/users/
1563080430/attribution/attrib.txt

No
secret
science

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there is more to innovation than secret science and patents!

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