open source R&D, licensing and commercialization of what the UNFCCC calls “environmentally-sound technologies (EST)” can provide an alternative to the proprietary intellectual property licensing vs. compulsory (state-mandated) licensing of EST for diffusion and absorption of these technologies in deprived communities in both developed and developing nations
A message from Liam Rattray:
“Some of you who are following the UNFCCC climate negotiations may know that there is currently an impasse between “developed” (i.e. US & EU) and “developing” (i.e. China and India) over intellectual property rights and the transfer of technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. I put quotes around develop* because it begs the question of who is “developing” and what we’re “developing” towards.
I think that open source R&D, licensing and commercialization of what the UNFCCC calls “environmentally-sound technologies (EST)” can provide an alternative to the proprietary intellectual property licensing vs. compulsory (state-mandated) licensing of EST for diffusion and absorption of these technologies in deprived communities in both developed and developing nations.
I released my working paper on Open Source Development and Climate Change with a paper, “How Open Source Development Can Resolve the North-South Intellectual Property Conflict in UNFCCC Negotiations: A Bipartisan Technology Transfer Pathway” yesterday and I would like to hear what people think about my arguments and proposals.
See: http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Open_Source_Development
In it I propose an Open Development Fund to be administered by the UNFCCC to provide grants to networked collaborative research and development immunities like the Factor E Farm in Missouri that create “environmentally-sound technologies” that provide for greenhouse gas mitigation and climate adaptation as part of an overall bipartisan (Annex-I and G77+China) proposal for Open Source Development. This fund would make equity investments or mesocredit business loans in local businesses that commercialize the open sourced technologies developed by communities affiliated with the fund. In this respect the necessary economic and information linkage between target communities and research communities would be fostered.
One way or another I want to build a p2p development fund, be it either through an international governmental body, like the UNFCCC, which could provide for an immediate flush of funds or through an independent non-profit which would spend many years building up the endowment it relies on to provide funding.”
Contact the author at liamratt via gmail
Michel & Liam, the evolution of Open Source practice from just the code (the engineering) into the process areas of innovation, product definition, and research has the potential to be even larger than Open code itself. Often most of the product research itself can be re-used for many more efforts than the applied manifestations can (everything can’t be service can it?)… or, to put it another way, there may be a higher re-use ratio in R&D itself than with the final (applied) engineered code elements.
Related to this, on the other end from the institutional side of an Open R&D, is the individual ad-hoc P2P space of DIY culture. One example of this is http://windowfarms.org/ and their notion of Open “R&D-I-Y”, the user-led evolution of open plans for an urban window-farm.
Seeing thoughts like those in this post keep ringing my ears with similar expansions elsewhere, like the evolution of agile methods from within the engineering culture into the user experience design culture, like the Agile UX efforts going on (http://www.agileexperiencedesign.org ). Highly iterative agile methods, along with P2P open R&D and User Experience Design practice seem to be the seeds of eventually having entirely Holistic Open Systems of creation & production that can lead to far better products being rolled out. Currently the Open and P2P single-discipline engineering approach of fail fast and cheap seems to hit a threshold filled with churn and also-rans since it lacks a multi-disciplinary approach that integrates knowledge and methods along side other disciplines that can actually better define what a good product can be.
Dan Latorre thanks for your comment. We need to find a way to provide open access and collaborative integration to the entire open source development pathway. From basic research, development, licensing, diffusion, to commercialization and absorption. Currently, it appears as if each stage in the process is independent. I think that this opens up some good opportunities for collaborative software design to integrate the process. Perhaps some kind of meta-site to provide the necessary linkages between people and resources. An online investment platform like the one I propose could do this.
Does anyone know of meta-sites that synthesizes all of the current open source developments? Perhaps there are independent ones for software, hardware and biotech?
-Liam
I’m slowly working through my in-box and just discovered Suresh’s work, OpenKollab. This project appears to also be trying to tie together the various stages of open development. Great stuff! http://wiki.openkollab.com/Home