OA [open access], OS [open source], FS [free software] & CC [Creative Commons] share commonalities but also have some differences: there are genuine convergences and genuine divergences....
Here is the heart of the matter. Let me try to convey it purely by analogy first: I am personally in favour of open-code pharmacology ("OP"): The formula for potential cures should not be kept secret, or prevented from being used to sell or even give away the medicine.
It does *not* follow from this, however, that if a commercial pharmaceutical company develops a non-OP cure for AIDS today that I will refuse to use it or promote it! Nor will I try to suppress or refuse to cooperate with OP research or OP researchers, while there are still diseases and patients, needing to be cured now.
To take this allegory further: OA is like Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF): All those doctors have already dedicated themselves to providing their
services* for free, but it does not follow from that that they should
only use, or only collaborate with OP drugs and OP suppliers. They should use whatever they can get, and favor OP whenever they can do so, *but not at the expense of the immediate needs of their patients*.
That's how it is with OA and OS/FS/CC: I am personally 100% in favour of OA, FS, and CC for my own output...and for the output of others of a like mind....But I would be against imposing OS/FS/CC (or OP) by fiat, for fear of losing potential creativity and productivity....
And the immediate situation for OA is this: 100% OA is within reach now. It needs OAI-compliant OA Institutional Repository (IR) software. I would personally prefer if all OA IR software (indeed all software) were GPL, but I would not mandate it, nor would I refuse the immediate help of non-GPL software in reaching 100% OA, any more than an MSF doctor would refuse the immediate help of a non-OP drug for treating AIDS, now.
(Maximizing research impact is not as pressing a problem as saving people from AIDS; so this analogy, like all analogies, has its limitations. But it's not a bad idea to ask ourselves quite explicitly whether we take research so lightly that we agree with the above reasoning for AIDS, but not for research.)
Comment. Stevan is right and his analogy is a good one. The principle may be even clearer when applied to "access-side" software, like operating systems and browsers, than when applied to "dissemination-side" software like OAI-compliant repository packages. We'd subtract most of the value of OA literature if we made it readable only on Linux machines.
The same principle applies to literature, not just software. Here's a relevant passage from the BOAI FAQ:
We do not ask researchers, teachers, consumers (or anyone else) to boycott any kind of literature or any kind of publisher. If the literature they need for their research, their courses, or their pleasure is not freely available online, then they should buy or borrow what they need. We ask them to help this cause by making their own writings freely available online, not by distorting their research projects or coursework by favoring open-access literature that doesn't meet their needs.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/25/2006 01:03:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
