[okfn-discuss] Postcode data petition - unsure.

Wed Oct 14 16:02:40 UTC 2009

A response to my recent email says (I am not stating the person's name  
since the response wasn't copied to the OKFN list)

> Control isn't freedom. Copyleft protects the latter against the  
> former. Would-be millionaires deserve no special privilege in this.  
> That said, copyleft ensures that they suffer no special disadvantage  
> as well.
>
>
>

I simply don't understand this antagonism toward those who seek to  
make wealth. "Would-be millionaires" are not despicable, but in my  
view, are admirable. I am not one of them, and I don't have the  
qualities that would make me one of them, but I do admire them.

Last week I met a guy who graduated from my alma mater, had a great  
idea, founded a company, worked 100s of hours a week, built it up,  
sold it for $135 million to another company, and is about to resign  
from this new company so he can work on new ideas and start new  
companies. He also gave back a huge endowment to his (and my) alma  
mater to fund a professor chair in operations research. That  
professorship will, hopefully, train countless new young students, one  
or two of whom might do what this guy did. This guy is 5 years younger  
than me, and has touched waaaaay more lives with his entrepreneurship  
and intellectual property than I ever will.

Entrepreneurs create wealth, and a lot of folks share in that wealth.

I don't have the streak of entrepreneurship in me, but I do have the  
passion to create the conditions in which entrepreneurship can  
flourish. I believe public domain data does just that. It levels the  
playing field so anyone who can, can become an entrepreneur.

In the context of this conversation, control and freedom are not  
antithetical. And, if they were, well, then, forcing others to  
ShareAlike would be no different than any other kind of control.

Oh well. I guess ShareAlike believers and Public Domain believers  
shall never meet.

>
>> On Oct 14, 2009 4:11 PM, "Mr. Puneet Kishor" <punkish at eidesis.org>  
>> wrote:
>>
>> On Oct 14, 2009, at 9:44 AM, Rufus Pollock wrote: > 2009/10/14 Jo  
>> Walsh <jo at frot.org>: >> dear all...
>>
>> Which is precisely why I believe all the ShareAlike licenses are
>> misdirected. Business folks and entrepreneurs don't want to lose
>> control over their IP, and so, are wary of ShareAlike in both  
>> software
>> and data, but especially in data. By forcing the adopter to "my way,"
>> I restrict interoperability.
>>
>> I just returned from a 3-day global conference on entrepreneurship  
>> and
>> innovation. I was handing out my "Creative Commons" business cards,
>> and guess what -- none of them had heard of it. I tend to forget that
>> the world doesn't really know about these alternative rights
>> movements, and although it is happy to learn about it, it is a big
>> world out there. They will be willing to adopt alternative schemes  
>> for
>> licensing provided they don't perceive them as a threat to their
>> control and freedom.
>> > >> There is a spectrum, not a line, between non-profit and for- 
>> profit >> activity. There are pl...
>>
>> --
>> Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org
>> Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org
>> Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http:// 
>> www.osgeo.org
>> Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor
>> Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Assertions are politics; backing up assertions with evidence is  
>> science
>> = 
>> = 
>> =====================================================================
>> _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss  
>> mailing list okfn-discuss at lists.okfn....
>>
>