[Board] Definition of "IP" and "Intellectual Poverty"

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

My opinion on this is that we ought to avoid use of the
term Intellectual Property in formal/official OSGeo
documents as their is a diversity of opinion on how
appropriate this term is, and that it's use may ultimately
be letting the enemies of open source frame the
conversation.

That said, I don't want to become language police (a loaded
term for Canadian's!) and spend a lot of effort and credibility
trying to change others.  I'm afraid this would make us appear
strident in the same way that - for instance - the Free Software
Foundations fight to refer to Linux as GNU/Linux ultimately
diminished the FSF (imho at least).

Best regards,
Frank


On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 12:43 AM, Arnulf Christl <arnulf at osgeo.org> wrote:
> Board,
> we still do not seem to have a common position wrt to what we
> understand by "IP" or "Intellectual Property". The shortest possible
> answer is no longer than 160 character [0] and reads:
>
> Note: Software ‪#patents‬ are dangerous, hinder innovation, make
> monopolies. Never confuse with copyright or license. "IP" is a
> misnomer!
>
> Therefore whenever there is no way to avoid using the term "IP" or
> "Intellectual Property" I put them in quotes.
>
> Wikipedia [1] defines the term as covering:
>
> * copyrights
> * trademarks
> * patents
> * industrial design rights
> * trade secrets
>
> ...and adds "in some jurisdictions." For convenience some people then
> also add "licenses" to the mix and while we are at it NDA, CLA and so
> on. In a way these things are related and depend on each other but
> they are also distinct and in many cases contradict each other, more
> so in different legislations. It should be apparent that mixing these
> concepts is not helpful to create clarity and this is why we should be
> very clear on what we mean by each individually and not lump them
> together. More thoughts by greater minds are also linked from
> Wikipedia [2].
>
> Best regards,
> Arnulf
>
> [0] https://twitter.com/sevenspatial/status/205184977963450370
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Property
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Property#The_term_itself
>
> --
> Arnulf Christl
> (OSGeo President)
> http://www.osgeo.org
> _______________________________________________
> Board mailing list
> Board at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board



-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer