[Wikipedia-l] Re: send in the academics

Fri Jul 30 05:37:55 UTC 2004

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.

-- Tim Starling