Copyleft: The Great Giveaway

["Sloan, Bernie" <bernies@uillinois.edu>]

May be of interest to some of you.....

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From: New Scientist <reedscienc@ProcessRequest.com>

Good ideas are worth money, so why are people giving them away for free?
Join our experiment to find out.

This week, New Scientist is doing something no other mainstream magazine
has - publishing an article under what's known as a "copyleft".

We're helping test one of the boldest ideas of our time. The outcome is up
to you. To read the article, go to
<www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft> on >NewScientist.com>. There,
you can provide feedback, copy the article, redistribute it, modify or
reissue it, without worrying that you've violated our copyright.

The article itself is about an idealistic movement called "open sourcing",
which is all about free circulation of knowledge - an emerging alternative
to growing corporate power and restrictive property rights. Open source is
covered by a special licence called the copyleft, which grants as much
freedom as possible, as long as you too release your version under the
same copyleft terms and conditions.

In software, open source is an undoubted success. Now some of its
supporters are trying out its methods elsewhere. Already there's open
source music, open source encyclopaedias, open source law, even open
source soft drinks.

We welcome your feedback on the concept, and input into the article
itself. No-one's really sure what the benefits of this experiment will be,
but if it works it could mean profound changes in publishing, technology,
music, even consumer products.

Kind regards

Alun Anderson
Editor-in-Chief
New Scientist

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Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
338 Henry Administration Building
506 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL  61801
Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax:     (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu