On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 15:37:55 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Abe wrote:
"Academia" is the name for a huge
institutionalized process of peer
review. Wikipedia is peer review on steroids, so you'd think that
academics would be clamoring to contribute to Wikipedia, especially since
academia and Wikipedia both love free expression and open discourse. The
difference is, academia is peer review with competition for prestige and
resources, and Wikipedia is not.
I don't know what academia you're familiar with, but where I'm from, I'm
told not to publish any source code for fear of losing competitive
advantage, and to patent anything that looks potentially useful via the
spin-off company. A spin-off company which doesn't do anything, it just
owns patents and spends large amounts of money "maintaining" them.
Publishing results is OK as long as everyone knows which fabulous
world-class group produced them.
This is primarily a result of IP protection and commercialisation being
seen as important for our national interests, and therefore an important
part of deciding how to allocate Federal research grants.
Abe's version is more prevalent in the humanities, while Tim's version
more accurately reflects the sciences, and in particular, engineering.
moink