SEARCH Engine web [07.25.06 08:31 PM]

Open source biotechnology is a truly brilliant and practical concept!!!

Even open source Bio-Nano Tech is vital as we are at the dawn, of these hi-technologies, and really have NO assured way of predicting their future impacts, and will need every resource to respond to any potential unfortunate outcomes.

Please post a VERY DETAILED perspective on this meeting, as well as his links so it can be DIGG-ed as one topic.

  Richard Jefferson [07.25.06 09:42 PM]

Hi all,

I'm still in Australia, but hitting the (metaphoric) road tomorrow and I'm very excited and honored to be meeting up with the Open Source community and having some of your mindspace to discuss some of our work. I want to add to what Tim has said a bit. There are some fascinating synergies and shared needs for patent and innovation system reform between the world of software and that of biological innovation. This session may outline some new areas where your own expertise and passion can have big impacts on people's lives outside of IT, including peer-review and analysis of patents, parsing and graphical mapping of opportunities and dangers, and shining a light under the rock to expose of the excesses of the system.

More importantly, I want to engage your imagination to visualize how the worldview that OS represents, and the new business models they allow and demand can serve as standard bearers in activities such as food security, agriculture, natural resource management, public health and medicine. Biological innovation is crucial for survival and for life quality of all (humans and non-humans). But considering there's about four billion people on the planet who live each day on less than the cost of a grande latte from Starbucks, we can do so much better. The efficiencies of distributive research and development, the leverage effects of combined efforts on the low end of the innovation stack, and the capability to harness brilliance as well as the mundane. These features, plus the basic respect for others' innovative potential and their own priorities, makes the development of practical BiOS (Biological Open Source) an imperative.

One could say that all the concepts embodied in the F/LOSS community, and indeed the pragmatic business implementations were foreshadowed by the very development of civilizations. Seems that domestication of plants and animals - the harnessing and improvement of genetic resources - that was done by millions of farmers and breeders over the millenia laid the foundations of all of modern civilization. And virtually all of the norms and practices of this critical activity are those of F/LOSS.

I just had the privilege of a visit here in lovely Australia by one of my heros - Jane Goodall - and I'll use her visit and its importance as the opening salvo in our discussion about Freedom to Innovate / Freedom to Cooperate.

See you for some great music and constructive dialog. Brian Behlendorf will likely join Tim and myself for the panel discussion after my presentation, and we may convince Eben Moglen to join. Eben is - as most of you know - an intellect of enormous gravitas, with whom I often find myself in violent agreement. Hope you'll enjoy this. I know Mike Marshall and Jovino Santos Neto will blow your socks off!

Richard Jefferson

  Matthew giles [07.26.06 06:09 AM]

But considering there's about four billion people on the planet who live each day on less than the cost of a grande latte from Starbucks, we can do so much better.
See you for some great music and constructive dialog.