Many of the synthetic biology research is aimed at medicine and health. New antibiotics have to come from somewhere! “Amyris Biotechnologies” is a good example of this succeeding — and they didn’t pursue the antibiotic for malaria for only big-profit motives — the researchers were very genuinely interested in solving a dangerous world health problem.

Personally I would like to see synthetic biology used to improve nutrition. Many vegetables (like sea vegetables) are very nutritious although they taste bad to most people (including myself) — wouldn’t it be great to give these plants a better taste & smell so it would be more satisfying to eat? I think so.

If you really want to create a similar environment to that which spawned the public domain, shareware, freeware, open source movement, then you need a mighty (and greedy, and antagonistic) enemy, as mighty as Microsoft was and is, and as mighty as AT&T was. Only that environment created sufficient technology pain to give birth to the original “open Unix” movement, and subsequent Linux movement. I don’t think anyone wants that part of the equation.

I’ve seen both sides of the problem in open source from the inside:

– Investors aren’t about to release intellectual property (source code) into the public domain which has even the slightest statistical probability of someday being worth something: this creates technological stagnation because the unused intellectual property is locked up. (One of the dramatic front-runners was Carmack, who supposedly fought his own board of directors for many quarters, until the original source to Doom was released to the public. The eventual effect was more sales.)

– Investors aren’t about to significantly improve on public intellectual property if the IP comes with viral terms which infect a significant portion of the investors’ technology. The result is also technological stagnation. A product which could be improved is not improved, because the open source license prevents improvement. Even middle-managers are quick to say: “There’s a GPL issue? Then forget it. Let’s add value in some other way.” This continues to be an issue with the Linux kernel, for example, where many and significant improvements could be made to add value to products, but can’t be made, since the kernel authors continue to limit the ways that industry can simultaneously improve the kernel and keep some trade secrets. (Linking proprietary code into the kernel is a violation of GPL, so kernel modules are “tainted”. More kernel symbols continue to be marked as GPL symbols, meaning the function can’t be referenced at all without tainting code.)

I do see the middle ground as the BSD-like license. This allows altruistic corporations to give back and freely innovate. It also allows greedy corporations to stay secretive. The “positive/negative liberty” assertion assumes that all corporations will remain greedy. It doesn’t enforce regulation, and assumes corporations will do the right thing. This is obviously too “free” for some altruists.

GPL gains much press because of the media and it’s legal issues. I believe there are far more success stories related to BSD-style commercialized products than most people imagine; the big difference is that no one hears much about them, because they don’t create such dramatic legalistic issues, and the corporations aren’t forced to admit the use.

Significant portions of the “network storage SMB market” was created from BSD-style operating systems — allowing the storage market to significantly reduce costs and innovate (ultimately becoming products like Apple’s “Time Machine”). OS/X is the most advanced operating system in the world for the same reasons — much improvement remains secret, though some amount of improvement remains public.

The most common basic cryptography is public domain. Secure http could have been technologically delayed by 10 years if a public library of code (with non-viral license) hadn’t existed. 10 years might seem lengthy though it’s an easily created delay due to technological standards-fighting..

Cisco also recently switched to using only BSD code (no more GPL or Linux) because innovation and any ability to add value (proprietary technology) would be stifled under a GPL viral-license. At least, that’s how I interpret their switch — I only know they switched (or are in the process of switching). This is a major business decision in terms of capital resources, so shouldn’t be taken as only a “at the water-cooler” decision.

Anyway, following on the “mistake” in Greenspan’s (and nearly everyone’s) philosophy that a free market has the intelligence (and/or foresight) to regulate itself, perhaps we can rightfully say that MORE corporations do need the forced regulation of viral-GPL, because the corporations would otherwise never open any portion of their property. Thus, added regulation (viral licensing) forces the market to become more open. Just be aware that this approach, too, creates technological stagnation.

Altruists who give things away for free yet claim subsequent users must also be altruists are like 6 year olds crying they didn’t get enough scoops of ice cream, a product of bitter academics. “I suffered under substandard wages for years trying to find the cure for malaria, so you aren’t allowed to make any money related to any of the technology either!” That’s an exaggeration, though it highlights the point.

It would be better to discuss specific points.. leave the philosophy for the soft scientists. What does opening biotech mean; given that the sequences themselves are already forced to be public domain. Forced-public (viral license) publication for new & existing protocols? A halt on patents for biotech methods? openwetware.org for all corporate use?

I invite you to check my current project, knowing that it’s completely open, no patents current or planned, and has definite potential for commercial application. Google “melaminometer”. On this project, I’m an altruist making no wages and I don’t mind if others profit on my work (that means I wasn’t fast enough myself). It would be better to know which specific portions of this or any project should (or could) remain secret or become open, in order to benefit bringing it to market (leaving aside a profit consideration and only looking at the single fact: would/could it get to market, yes or no).

Traditionally, everything remains secret (proprietary), even public information — after slight rewording — is transformed into secrets. Since we aren’t after traditional models, then… what.

Thanks for the response. I thought that you might be referring to someone else but I wanted to make myself clear.

I actually am of a different opinion regarding “free as in speech” vs public domain licenses. It’s a rather deep philosophical question that people have been debating for a great while; which is the more important freedom, that one which maximizes the freedom of the individual or of the collective?

The most effective theoretical tool that I’ve seen to delineate between the two is the distinction between positive and negative liberty. The GPL is a positive license in that asserts limitations on the use of the software and compels the user to participate as a member of a community. BSD-like (and public domain) licenses are negative licenses since they allow the user to do as they please with the code (the user moves in a “negative space” of limitations).

In my opinion and experience, the GPL is successful precisely because it is positive. It provided a framework by which developers felt they were protected to produce and release software without someone taking advantage of them. After a while, their cumulative production added up to something that was so compelling industry could no longer ignore, compete or do without their work. It’s hard to argue today that GPL licensed software is not responsible for billions of dollars worth of wealth and commerce.

For biotech, the reason why a free software license is important is not because we are business unfriendly (I do have capitalist in my job title after all!) but because we need to create a similar environment as the early days of the free and open source software movement. We need to have developers feel that they have enough room to produce their product, release it to the community and not have their work co-opted or used against them.

Better productivity – yes!
Open access to research & design for accelerating innovation – yes!
Preventing unhealthy monopolistic practices and allowing skunkworks to thrive – yes!
Ending patent/IP lockup – yes!

No worries; it wasn’t you I was paraphrasing.. (though in reality it doesn’t matter who said what, as long as effort moves forward)

Regarding moving towards creating a real model for public domain science: Carlson additionally made a remark in the other technical session (paraphrase): It’s curious that “open source” licensing has caught on, while use of “public domain” (non-)licensing has faded.

Many — including myself, depending on the project — are willing to altruistically / hobby-istically donate time & effort & resources for bio projects. These altruistic efforts shouldn’t come with a forced mandate that: “you can use this but you MUST share all subsequent efforts.” This is the bad viral aspect of GNU (“copy left”) which should be avoided. It limits commercialization and stifles innovation. One question to ponder is: why is it called open source biotech; why not “public domain” biotech?

I prefer public domain-style licenses. My open source projects have been BSD-license. Build it and give it away free, without any stipulations on later usage. This allows both altruist and commercial efforts to benefit from the innovation in parallel.

The biotech industry might be better served by using the term “public domain”. It eliminates this confusion regarding viral-source (GPL) licensing -vs- commercializable (BSD) licensing.

The other issue is how “free biotech” can be made free, when reagents cost so much. Software is free to modify or copy. Biology costs a lot to modify or copy. We definitely need to figure out a good way to fit public domain into this ecosystem. I’ll write more on this later.

I was on the VC panel and don’t recall anyone talking about the PC architecture resulting in free and open source software. In fact, I was the one pushing very strongly on the need for free and open source biotech and have never used the genesis of the PC architecture as an argument for the ultimate success of open source biology.

I don’t know if you were referring to me in particular, but to be clear, what I did say was the commodity hardware plus commodity software have had radical implications for global productivity, from software and service companies to brick and mortar businesses. Whether this is the results of an explicit vision and plan or via the twists and turns of history, it remains a fact.

Free and open source biology will be a very difficult and long goal to achieve, but I believe that the biotech industry it will converge on it as a foundational platform in the same way the IT industry has.

I’d be happy to chat more about this if you’d like.

talli