Doing science or other scholarly research on a computer system that does not provide full disclosure is very much like building on a foundation of secrecy, as described above. The result is that the wealth of human knowledge becomes locked into a particular individual's (or group of individuals) control. For example, imagine if all the scholarly work in the world were published using a single word processor that would only run on a certain proprietary operating system. This might mean that one individual could control all of human achievement. Moreover, what about longevity? What will likely be more readable in 20 years, the ASCII text of this html document, or an equivalent document typeset in WordStar 1.0 or WordPerfect 1.0 or Word 1.0?
We are entering a pivotal era in which passionate individuals and hobbyists will have a much greater impact on science than obedient and subservient corporate employees. Linus is a great example, where numerous hobbyists and enthusiasts around the world created a better operating system than even multimillion dollar corporations have been able to make. This is a perfect example of how passion (and cooperation with other passionates) is becoming more important than wealth. In order that these passionates (many of them still in high school or even elementary school) can participate fully in the development of the world's leading scientific endeavours, we must ensure that they are not excluded from the world's scientific knowledge. Thus it is both wrong and to the detriment of science that the world's knowledge be built upon a proprietary foundation that they may not have access to. Thus a goal of GPLW is to set forth a framework to ensure that one corporation does not "own" all of Computer Science, and that one university (or two universities working together) does not own all of "Wearables". In particular, the goal of GPLW is to make sure anyone can participate in this new science based on their merit and not what university they come from or what corporation they work for.
Furthermore, in the future when we wear our computers, they will function as second brains (or third "Oranchak" hemispheres, as defined in http://wearcomp.org/wearcompdef.html), and so if they are like parts of our brains, then computation will become just like thinking. With a WearComp or even an implanted computer, will it be a thought crime to "think" about "exclusive OR" which is patented? Would it be a thought crime to mentally add up a grocery list with the help of an implanted silicon mental prosthetic, if, for example, what you're thinking has been patented?
This hardwear, softwear, or firmwear is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for something similar to GPLW as it will appear in final form.
You can obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/COPYING-2.0 or by writing to or by writing to
Free Software Foundation, Inc.,675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Steve is a faculty member at University of Toronto; you may want to visit his official faculty WWW page at http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~mann
Contact info: Professor Steve Mann, University of Toronto, Department of Electrical Engineering, 10 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G4 mann@eecg.toronto.edu.