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lack of involvement in the kernel != lack of involvement in free softwarelack of involvement in the kernel != lack of involvement in free softwarePosted Jul 24, 2007 19:08 UTC (Tue) by stevenj (guest, #421)Parent article: Where have the universities gone?
The editor seems to make an unwarranted leap: from the (near) lack of university-copyright files in the Linux kernel, the editor seems to conclude that "university representation in the stream of free software contributions has fallen to much lower levels." The Linux kernel is a rather unusual piece of software in many ways, and is not something you want to use to draw conclusions about free software in general, I suspect. Although it is certainly true that corporate contributions to free software have increased by leaps and bounds in the last 15 years, so that the fraction of work being done at universities has decreased, I'm much more skeptical that the amount of free-software work being done at universities has decreased in absolute terms. I know that in my own field of numerical computation, a large number of the major free packages (and not just those from 20-40 years ago) originate and/or are substantially supported by universities.
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lack of involvement in the kernel != lack of involvement in free software Posted Jul 24, 2007 20:35 UTC (Tue) by kh (subscriber, #19413) [Link] I was thinking the same thing. I see a number of GNU projects from major universities - just not with the kernel. Some quick examples that come to mind - I think UT (Austin) has a policy that all software developed is released under the GPL by default - they have some network management tools in general use. UW (Madison) has GNU Octave Your BSD example - the code was (mostly?) controlled by one university - which makes for easier scheduling - much like my GNU Octave example above. Maybe that makes smaller projects more desirable.
lack of involvement in the kernel != lack of involvement in free software Posted Jul 25, 2007 20:00 UTC (Wed) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link] I think I wrote those network management tools you're referring to, actually. ;-)
UT Austin has approved (but not mandated) the GPL for software release, so long as the designated reviewer at the college level in the org chart signs off on it, and it is believed that the software is not, for some reason, likely to see success as a commercial product. This can be due to it not being designed along commercial product lines (as in our tools, which require a significant amount of systems administration integration work by the adopter), or it can be due to the scope, research vs. application intent, etc.
As I said above, we can still get code out there, but it's not something that can just be done on a whim.
lack of involvement in the kernel != lack of involvement in free software Posted Jul 24, 2007 20:35 UTC (Tue) by fjorba (subscriber, #6175) [Link] I fully agree; in my own field (digital libraries) most of interesting software comes from universities and research institutes, plus some public and national libraries too. Applications that are either production-ready and/or full of innovative ideas.
"for research purposes only" is common Posted Jul 24, 2007 23:53 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Many universities release software on a restricted basis, "for research purposes only" is typical, and they attempt to extract money if anyone is interested in using the software commercially. A lot of university electronic design automation software falls into this category.
lack of involvement in the kernel != lack of involvement in free software Posted Jul 25, 2007 13:48 UTC (Wed) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link] I think this is because it is difficult to make academically novel and useful inventions in standard modern kernel design. Remember that the motivations of most academics is to get scientific results published. I suppose the linux kernel isn't a very good place to do science experiments.
lack of involvement in the kernel != lack of involvement in free software Posted Jul 25, 2007 19:03 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] Several projects of my old home the Electronics and Computer Science school of the University of Southampton are GPL'd including GNU Eprints. It's true though that there's pressure to commercialise. I think its necessary to approach those with the power to make such decisions and force them to make the choice, commercialise (perhaps without you) or free the code. Sometimes it's possible to do both, but it doesn't pay to confuse them with more options. Too often an interesting project just rots on someone's hard disk. If it's going to rot, at least let it rot on a SourceForge site where someone else might stumble over it and re-use it rather than on a postgrad's desktop machine where it probably isn't even backed up.
In my last research work at ECS I was working with some BSD origin code that had somehow acquired a "no commercial use" legend from some US university that had worked on it. I maintained a modified version half-heartedly for 6-12 months by which time someone had written something rather better from scratch under a Free license. Perhaps the rewrite was needed anyway, but I suspect not, such a waste.
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