Re: [Sheflug] Re:Euro Parliament recommends open source

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "Jan-Erik" == Jan-Erik Bullett <jan-erik [at] cableinet.co.uk> writes:

    Jan-Erik> The principle works with not only computer software but
    Jan-Erik> all aspects of knowledge and information sharing - open
    Jan-Erik> source promotes development, understanding and
    Jan-Erik> advancement, whereas withholding information and
    Jan-Erik> commercial sensetivity restricts development and
    Jan-Erik> promotes mistrust and animosity - with me at least, but
    Jan-Erik> I'd be interested if anyone had any examples to the
    Jan-Erik> contrary.

Non-recreational drugs.

Many of the modern ones (including all the AIDs drugs and most cancer
drugs) would not exist, and most of the rest would just exist in the
lab, without patents.  They're simply too dangerous to give, even to
dying people, without spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars
on testing without human subjects.  Then testing them on people
approximately doubles the further cost.  Freeing that chemical formula
(beyond the publication in the patent itself) makes it impossible to
pay for development.

This is because the transactions costs of licensing or developing
around patents are negligible to those who can afford to do
development at all.  In fact, typically trivial modifications of a
drug that infringe patents usually have very similar side effects.
The extra difference that prevents a new drug from infringing the
existing one often changes the side effects, thus creating additional
benefit from the new drug.  I don't know any well-informed person who
denies this difference with software, and even those of questionable
sanity rarely do (eg, rms won't touch that question).

It really comes down to the issue of cost of reinventing and
distributing a patented idea vs cost of getting a patent and licensing
it.  In drugs the former is prohibitive, the latter negligible.  In
software, vice versa.

One interesting aspect of the information revolution is that good
simulators are expending the domain of engineering fields that are
like software, and shrinking those like drugs, dramatically.

-- 
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