So why isn’t there a commons for ideas? Why isn’t there a trust system, a social contract for sharing ideas in the same way that Open Source creates a safe environment for sharing code? For example, if I came up with a useful workshop facilitation methodology, I would share it. However, if I knew that I was likely to be given credit anytime anyone used it, I would probably share more enthusiastically and maybe even put more effort into polishing the methodology for use by others.
Why can’t we open license ideas in the same way that we license software, photos, or blog entries under a Creative Commons or GPL license? I don’t need to get paid and I am only too happy when people use my ideas (rare as they are) but it would add an extra incentive if I knew I was likely to get credit for thinking them up.
Is it not conceivable to create a social mechanism to achieve this? I titled the blog “Open Patents” but perhaps it would be even better to call it an “Open Concept”. And while the idea is inspired by the Creative Commons license, it might be better to call it a “social contract” in order to avoid the sense that there may be a litigious aspect to the idea. (Thanks to Mark Surman for pointing out the wrong flavour of the word “license” in this context). There could be an informal wikipedia-like resource for registering an Open Concept in a shared, public space but it needn’t even be that formal. A blog post or web page might be sufficient. You could use the Way Back Machine to establish prior art.
Naturally there would be disputes and in the “standing on the shoulders of giants” nature of knowledge there would be a lot of cross-linking of Open Concepts but if the debates were over who gets intellectual credit not who gets paid, then hopefully dispute resolution might be handled in a relatively non-litigious manne
Facilitating Innovation
A perfect candidate for OpenConcept is Allen (Gunner) Gunn’s SpeedGeek facilitation process. A great concept that he and Aspiration have shared widely. That is largely because of the Open Source kind of guy that Gunner is. Others in a similar position might be tempted but worried that they might not get credit if they share. An Open Concept License could tip them over the edge. I think this would encourage people to “release early and release often” their ideas.
Also, if one were to introduce a kind of genealogy of Open Concepts, one might increase the likelihood of tinkering that leads to innovation. If there were a place where you could see Gunner’s SpeedGeek concept but also see how he tinkered with the concept of SpeedDating to get there, you double the opportunities for tinkering innovation. Someone might riff on Gunner’s idea or they might see a different direction to take the original SpeedDating concept. Seeing how innovation evolves leads to more innovation
Which leads me to my next point.
How to represent and store Open Concepts
It may be that the software already exists for managing an ecology of Open Concepts. Genealogy software. Genealogy software could provide the notion of inheritance, siblings, and offspring which would ideally suit a representation of Open Concepts. Of course you would need to adapt the software to have just one or in fact many parents but perhaps modern life has already made genealogy software adapt to these possibilities. You would have to make it wiki-like to facilitate an open and consensus driven approach. You could allow for people to “vouch” for the originality of others ideas and have an Ebay-style rating of authenticity/reliability.
Finally, if this were really successful and well-established, could it not provide a resource of “prior art” that might help to inoculate patent systems against bad patents?
So, is this a dumb idea? Unworkable? Am I missing something? Set me straight somebody.
This blog post represents an OpenConcept, Attribution, Share-alike 🙂
Hi Steve,
Thanks for sharing the post, it sparked a very interesting
conversation in Delhi.
I think there are a number of issues with the open concept idea,
starting with the definition of concept in this case. Assuming we
avoid philosophic ambiguities over what is a concept and ownership of
it and restrict the domain to a space that is an alternative to
patenting, then we still will have a problem determining the origins
of concept – the originality question. The method/theorem behind
calculating the hypotenuse is attributed to Pythagorus, as history
has recorded it that way, but I would take the Socratic argument and
say that originality of the method is open for all time. I would
think Socrates would not have made claim to the Socratic method.
While mapping an origin of species is possible, a genealogy of
concepts will hold true only by agreement – originality by common
acceptance, the social contract – and made problematic with disputes
over deriatives and differences. Uniqueness will always be debatable
(as with the point about originality), and I imagine fame (and
artificial immortality) would be a greater incentive than money to
fight over the claim of originality of concepts.
I think a formal system of attribution will result in the atomization
of concepts/methods, the same problems we see with fair use in the
over-exercised copyright/trademark/patent regimes. Even if use is
not a problem here (i.e. use it freely but attribute it), we may be
moving towards unnecessary attribution overheads (be it in action/
archive or making the psychic note). Licensing such as CC, while a
healthy alternative, is a form of licensing proliferation
nonetheless. Imagine the many acts/methods/concepts that could be
attributable on a daily basis (like tipping), and now imagine the
energy and effort to do so. I think the attribution system you are
thinking about exists already, but not in formal terms, they are
embedded in tradition, science, general knowledge, etc., and there
may be value in keeping it all license free.
I think there is a need to safeguard a license-free public domain, that is fast diminishing because of claims from the right and the left. We should avoid freeing anything up that’s essentially the most free and be careful about extending the concept of property. I can see how resetting defaults is necessary (and therefore CC) in a world where the default is set to copyright. And I understand the desire to cover methods/concepts where no alternative exists to patents; however, I think there are sets of knowledge that are license-free (if not also attribution-free) in the public domain, which we can consider default-less and may diminish (both the present sets and possibly the acceptance of new future sets) with the adoption of a commons. We may not want to set any defaults in this case, even in the name of innovation – some of these license-free and/or attribution-free concepts have been the giants, as it were :).
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Hi,
I like what you wrote, me and a friend thought about this alot for a while (before I saw this blog), and made a web site exactly for the purpose of sharing ideas. I was looking to see what google will bring for openpatents, and I ran in to your blog. There is also a site called openpatents.org, but that deals with software. And we thought we were the first ones to make up this name…
Any way, please have a look, I would love to hear what you think! – http://www.openpatents.net
Best regards,
Uri
Hi Uri. Amazing. Such a pleasure to see someone thinking along the same lines. I think what might be even more successful than having simple reviews of the ideas, is to have a Technorati style system for monitoring people who link to and credit the idea. I think the main obstacle to people sharing their ideas is feeling that they might not get credit for them.
My assumption is that most ideas have as a goal the solution and/or facilitation of a specific problem, which is usually related to a physical “challenge”.
For instance, your example (“a useful workshop facilitation methodology”) has as a primary goal the facilitation of a workshop. Thus you will be able to measure the effectiveness of your idea by evaluating the methodology in the context of a workshop.
In my opinion, the website (process) is a way to formalize the idea process, to think with “one head”, and to monitor and document the process in real-time.
Most ideas are conceived by a person or group of people based on 1) a problem to be solved, 2) ideas who have solved the problem, and 3) on the successes and failures or others. These are usually done informally.
The beauty of this concept is that every idea, whether it takes us to the solution or not, is valuable and tracked in real time.
You have given the proper basis for discussion. The next step is to conceive a more formal Design Specification document or, as you say, directly start with a simple blog or wiki.
The more structured you make it at the beginning, the easier will be to manage and expand it in the future.
The issue of authenticity (of user, date, etc) can be guaranteed by a digital signature.
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