freely accessible information portal 06-21-2015d2301

2015-06-22

freely accessible information portal 06-21-2015d2301
free information
free culture (opposite of permission culture)
creative commons
remix culture
Libre culture
copy left
how to make information free while still paying people
intellectual property (ip)
Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike
Lawrence Lessig
free software movement
GNU project
open access
open source

I think that information can benefit the most people and evolve most rapidly if it is freely accessible.  If it is freely accessible then people can use it, modify it, build upon it, combine it with other ideas, etc.  The information/idea will evolve, and allow for the most increase in order, most rapidly when freely accessible.  If the information is protected by copyrights or patents, then it can still evolve, but probably more slowly since people have to pay to use the information, the information may be harder to find, and/or they may need to obtain an individual's or company's permission to use the information/idea.  One of the arguments against making information free is that people will not be rewarded for good ideas or have no incentive or less incentive to produce good ideas.

How can one produce information/ideas, make them freely available, and still provide incentives and rewards to produce the information/ideas (still pay people)?  Here are some possibilities.
-Have a philanthropist or organization fund the work
--We see this from numerous examples from Rockefeller at the end of his life, Bill Gates after his Microsoft career, the Broad Institute, etc.
-Have the government fund the work.
--We see this with the NIH with biological research in which researchers compete for grants, and then if they are rewarded a grant they must make the publication freely accessible by law.  Also, the NIH also maintains many databases, resources, and software programs that are made freely available to the public.
-Use the money from a company to fund the generation of information which is then made freely available.  Therefore, the company would not financially benefit from intellectual property which only needs to be produced once and then can be made available without further effort.  The company would only earn money from things which require time, energy, and/or each time it is provided such as customer service and physical products.  Customer service and physical products require time, energy, and/or resources every time they are provided.  Information/ideas/intellectual property on the other hand, does not require any time, energy, and/or resources (or negligible amounts of these things) to make available after the initial generation of the information/ideas/intellectual property. 
--Canonical does this to a certain degree with Ubuntu.  There is philanthropic money from Mark Shuttleworth, but they also provide paid customer service and other paid items.
--A company like Life Technologies offers some free software and tools which was paid for by the company from the profits they made selling products.
-Produce information and make it freely available while accepting donations.

Note that some people generate information for the sheer enjoyment of it and are not in need of payment for particular projects.

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