Open source: free research and development
»All new ideas and
inventions belong to the community. Just imagine, earlier we wasted over a
hundred years building vehicles with combustion engines.«
– Joytopia
In the computer branch, particularly in
software programming, a gratifying development has been noticeable for some
years in the form of free software or the open-source movement. The idea is
simple: a programmer makes his development freely available to the entire
community of developers. Everybody is allowed to use his software, modify it
and develop it further on condition that the creator is mentioned by name and
the developments based on it are also made available to the community on the
same conditions. Wonderful software has been created in this way. Most of the
internet is based on open-source software, in particular the Linux operating
system, with which most internet servers run nowadays.
Open source is also becoming common in other
fields, for example open content for text and images. There is, for example, a
shortened edition of this book as a free e-book. It is published under a
Creative Commons license. Anyone is allowed to copy it for non-commercial
purposes. Yes, it is even explicitly desired to send the free e-book to all
your friends since the world needs a solution as soon as possible and the
contents of this book can contribute decisively to solving the current
problems. It certainly needs to be optimised and for this very reason it is
important for as many people as possible to know about it and help to develop
it further.
Research and development also need to become
free in all other fields. It is unacceptable that inventions and discoveries
that could serve humanity are locked away from the public due to antiquated
patent and copyright laws because they are not in the interests of some
companies. Therefore we recommend open source for all fields of research. We
need free research, free development, free thinking – and free donation…
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