[h2o-discuss] Welcome to h2o-discuss

[nesson@law.harvard.edu]

Dear Members of the h2o-discuss list,

Thank you for you interest in the work of the Berkman Center, and a 
special thanks to those who are already contributing to this list. 
Forgive me for not contributing sooner, and forgive me also for now 
going offline for two weeks.

The most important message I took from the May 20 strategic planning 
meeting was that the case has to be made for the importance of open 
code to a wide audience. I want to share the story of the Berkman 
Center's own case to make within Harvard, and I hope others of you 
will share stories of your own.

Earlier this spring, the Berkman Center proposed the formation of a 
legally independent nonprofit entity -- a consortium of educational 
centers to foster the development of open software, open research, 
and open content.  (<http://www.opencode.org>) The Provost of Harvard 
responded to this announcement with a note stating that the 
permission of Harvard's President and Fellows would be required for 
the Berkman Center to sponsor the formation such an entity "outside 
Harvard." (<http://www.opencode.org/faq/>) 

This is, I believe, a request from the hierarchy of Harvard to be 
persuaded of the wisdom of the path we at the Berkman Center espouse. 
It is an opportunity for us to present our case for open code in an 
open way to the leadership of a great educational institution -- an 
institution with a glorious past, a glowing present, and an uncertain 
future. 

Even more importantly, it is an opportunity to explain, not only to 
the administrative hierarchy of Harvard, but also to others in 
similarly situated institutions and to the world at large, why 
openness in code, content, and law is essential to the future. It is 
an opportunity for us, in conjunction with other institutions, to 
attract and engage an international audience to consider the argument 
for openness, to deliberate in structured and moderated discussion, 
and to form rough consensus.

The Provost's caution provided background for our May 20, 1999 
strategic planning meeting, and it provides the Berkman Center with 
an agenda for the coming year, leading, we hope, to a positive result 
in time for Harvard's Millenium Internet & Society Conference, May 
2000.

Unlike the frontier Columbus opened when he discovered America, there 
are no pre-existing purple mountains and fruited plains in 
cyberspace. Cyberspace exists only as we build it, and how we build 
it is up to us. 


So, the key strategic insights for me from our May 20 meeting relate 
to who we are and what we can do. We represent the integration of 
three important communities: coders, teachers, and lawyers.  We have 
the capacity to challenge the boundaries of our separate cultures in 
service of an open cyber environment. We can combine our talents to 
design open architecture. We can, as coders, build it. We can, as 
teachers, fill it with open content. We can, as lawyers, defend it.

In the words of my colleague Eric Wiseman, leader of our Open Code 
Project (<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projects/opencode.html>), "let 
us begin."

We are making an argument for open information technology. We need to 
understand, articulate and project our argument. We need to explain 
the relationship of open code to freedom, justice, security, and 
education.

We intend to initiate and foster a campaign for OPEN IT that makes 
the issues of openness central to the institutional, local, national, 
and international politics of the future. 

We are building the environment in which we intend this argument to 
develop. (<http://opencode.org/courseware>)

The Internet was born of public spirit out of government and 
education. It grew in the eighties as an open domain. In the nineties 
it was discovered by capital investors, who realized that investment 
in Internet produced exponential return. So began a still-growing 
rush of capital into the Internet that has produced an unprecedented 
growth of the proprietary domain. But there has been no balancing 
growth of the open domain. Rather, we must organize and build it. We 
need to convince our institutions -- government, academic, 
philanthropic -- that the creation of a substantial open domain 
serves their missions.
	
Our institutions are largely run by people who do not understand the 
medium into which they are being rushed. To persuade our institutions 
to invest themselves in an open knowledge domain, we need to offer 
comprehensive vision, scalable demonstration, open organization, and 
a positive business plan.

Harvard, like other similarly situated institutions, faces three 
broad options: (1) Do nothing. Just keep going as we are, with pens 
and yellow pads; (2) Invest in helping teachers reach new audiences 
and teach in new ways; (3) Set up Harvard.com -- commit to the 
commercial online education business.

Harvard's business model is currently based on tuition, endowment and 
product sales, the last a relatively recent and rapidly growing 
corruption in which a product-sales business orientation threatens to 
extend from sales of sweatshirts to sales of courses. 

The model of university as producer of knowledge-as-product-for-sale 
is closed. Knowledge is treated as property to be copyrighted, 
patented, classified, licensed, and litigated. Under this closed 
model, creative work cannot progress without negotiations about 
license fees (the ambit of legal "fair use" at a minimum). As faculty 
become work-for-hire, money becomes the currency of the campus, and 
legality the dominant feature of relationship. Under this model, the 
nature of Harvard will change fundamentally -- for the worse, I 
think. 

The community of scholars at the heart of the academy trades riches 
for a comfortable secure environment in which to think, research, and 
teach. This community, comprised of intellectuals who do not hold 
money paramount, will be oppressed by a commercial/legal environment.

The Berkman Center aspires to demonstrate a different model -- OPEN 
IT, we call it. We encourage cooperative work dedicated to the open 
domain. Faculty, students, staff, alumni, relatives, and friends are 
permitted and encouraged (though not required) to work together in 
the public interest. Intellectual community and creative process is 
our product, knowledge the by-product. This approach galvanizes 
spirit and produces educational works of great distinction and wide 
public utility.  Furthermore, this model maintains the community of
scholars while avoiding the meanness of money and licenses. It will 
enhance the prestige of the institutions that contribute and become
part of it. But there are questions.  In particular, can such a model 
be sustained by tuition and endowment? 

OPEN IT

Who will support IT?
Who will join our list?
Who will participate in our next lecture and discussion series?  
(<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/online>)
Who will contribute talent? (<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people>)
Who will contribute funds? 
(http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sponsors.html>)
Who will work with me in a patent group to advance the open genome 
and defend open code? (<http://www.opencode.org>)
Who will work with Larry Lessig to found the Berkman Press?
Who will work with John Perry Barlow to develop OPEN MP3?
Who will work with Eric Eldred to build a Copyright Commons? 
(<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc>)
Who will work with Dave Lubin and Caroline Hunter on Jamaica as a 
demo developing nation? (<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberjam>)
Who will tell friends we need help?

We think we have a working business model. We service an open 
knowledge domain to an audience of customers we judge best able to 
contribute to it. That is and always has been Harvard's mission and 
the mission of educational institutions in general. OPEN IT is a 
mission we hold in common with other great institutions, so let us 
join to build a magnificent common resource for us all.

Charles Nesson
aka eon