state of research

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Peter Wayner <pcw2 () flyzone com>
Reply-To: Peter Wayner <pcw2 () flyzone com>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 10:22:57 -0400
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [open-source] DARPA denies story Re: Grant for OpenBSD...


All of this makes sense given the evolution of academic research. I
should have made it clear that I was operating with older information
gleened from the early 90's. The headlong rush toward profits in the
academy has probably shifted things against open source and it's hard
to see much change on the horizon. Well, the dot com crash might
reduce the profit incentives for researchers pushing them to open
source things, but the stock market crash is really tightening the
screws on the universities.

The lack of support from universities was one of the things that
surprised me when writing _Free for All_. Sure, Stallman worked at
MIT for a bit and the BSD guys worked out at Berkeley, but that
changed rapidly once the 90's came around. Today, it's truly
astounding how little of the open source we have comes from within
the academy given the historical devotion to open source ideals.

None of this is really that surprising when you think about it. I ate
lunch with a professor last week. He lamented the fact that he was
just a proposal generating machine. One day, he hoped to have enough
funding so he could actually do some of the research. In the mean
time, he just kept the paper flying. He said it was amazing how
little he could do with $400k after the university finished absorbing
the overhead. C'est la guerre.




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