Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 23:05:58 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) Cc: jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org (j mckitrick), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: quote about open source Message-ID: <200102022305.QAA16383@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20010202151744.O38235@lpt.ens.fr> from "Rahul Siddharthan" at Feb 02, 2001 03:17:44 PM
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> By that reasoning, there can't be innovation in science either, > because it's always been "open source" -- share your ideas, publish > them, etc. The idea of patenting scientific discoveries is pretty > recent, and even so, the equivalent of "closed source" (hide your > methods, reveal only your results) just doesn't exist -- because > people know such things cannot be taken seriously. You are aware that both Feynman and Dyson used Clifford Algebras to do much of their ground breaking work, but did not share this tool with their collegues, right? Most of the early QED (Quantum Electro Dynamics) work they did appeared to "skip steps" for most of their contemporaries, who lacked these tools. There was a lot of "the proof is left to the student", which seemed like hand waving. Even today, unless you take your QED classes from an extremely enlightened professor, you are likely to not ever hear about Clifford algebras, and even get a theoretical physics degree, without laying your hands on this important tool. Another example (which is probably a bad example, because there were national security reasons for non-disclosure) were the NSA modifications to the IBM DES algorithm, which appeared to weaken the cryptosystem to conventional (at the time) attacks. It was only 12 years later, when differential analysis was independently discovered outside the NSA, that it became obvious that the changes in fact strengthened the algorithm. I am aware of a number of physicists who are working on what I consider absolutely brilliant ideas, and who have made very significant progress in predicting phenomena, going down their roads less travelled, but who are completely unwilling to share their work, except in a very small circle of trust, until they have pushed it much farther. One of these physicists literally predicted the existance of the W particle _from theory_, and, further, calculated its energy _on the nose_, back in the early 1970's, and _still_ has only published bits and pieces. As a more contemporary example, the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture (that all elliptic curves have modular forms), which if proven, proved Fermat's last theorem, was worked on by the mathematician involved in total silence and isolation, until he believed he had solved the problem. Perhaps my favorite example is when Sir Edmund Halley went to Newton, described his concept of a "comet", and asked Newton to help him figure out what shape the orbit would take. Rather than embarking on a long project over many years, Newton thought about it for a few minutes, seemingly considering whether to undertake a project that would cost him a large chunk of his adult life, and stated "an ellipse". Newton, of course, did not bother to tell Halley that he had earlier invented calculus. Even without a patent system that permits patenting discoveries, scientists are just as closed-mouth about "trade secrets" as any industrialist who is in it for the money: money is not the only reward one might seek, despite what western society seems to have distilled down as the quintessence of life. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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