[plug] [link] [OT] Open Source genetics

[Sham Chukoury]

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 14:03, James Devenish wrote:

<snip>

> True, though I don't imagine too many teenagers with PC3 facilities in
> their bedrooms, despite repeated requests from their mothers ;-) You
> have to be surprisingly well-resourced in order to be a hobbyist,
> despite appearances to the contrary. The hobbyist can come up with the
> idea, build prototypes, and write history as has so often happened in
> the past. But to fully express these inventions for public benefit
> surely requires something more.

<snipetty snip>

> Sure. But how many hobbyists have their own IC fabrication facilities,
> hard-drive manufacturing facilities, vacuum tube or LCD construction
> facilities, etc.? Someone's inventing and mass-producing these tools and
> it's usually large corporations. When we imagine that the proprietary
> manufacturing and product information is free for all, who would be able
> to take advantage of that? Other large corporations, consortia, wealthy
> governments and well-funded entrepreneurs. So the use of free software
> relies on the use of hardware that is largely produced by people with
> something to hide. And to run a computer...you need relatively clean
> power, reasonable ambient climate, protection from liquids and excessive
> dust, etc. So until physical resources can actually be delivered to
> every person that should have them, we might at times be better off
> letting the proprietary interests have their way (within reason).

Hmmm, indeed. May I suggest an alternative perspective to your 'lone
hobbyist-inventor' vs 'large wealthy corporations' idea...

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/opensource.html (especially
opening paragraphs, with referrences to
http://www.designthatmatters.org/ and http://www.thinkcycle.org/)

Also, my thoughts on the above article at:
http://eleusis.f2o.org/kosmosis/alpha/viewarticles.php?entry=13

In a nutshell: Open source methods don't only exist to give leverage to
individual hobbyists scattered all around the world, against large
wealthy corporations. They offer a *complementary* alternative to the
corporate way of doing things. That is, people, or groups of people, who
may or may not be so-called hobbyists, can benefit from certain
applications of open source methods, as well as some of the large
wealthy corporations (IBM & Linux?).

Enjoy.
§:)