Term paper on Open-source Software and the Triple Helix Model of Science
This is a term paper I wrote for the Science and Society course at Sabanci University in the spring of 2022.
Term Paper Question: What is free and open-source software? Where does it stand in the Triple Helix Model of the social organization of science? Does it have remedies for the disadvantages of the Triple Helix Model? Does it have its weaknesses with respect to the Triple Helix Model?
Introduction
The social organization of science underwent considerable change during the 1980s, from the Liberal Model which gave universities the freedom to choose how to allocate the resources they are granted by the government, to the Triple Helix Model in which the scientists also collaborated heavily with corporations to conduct research. This change had many significant consequences on the relationship between the science community, private sector, government, also public. As it will be shown in the following, section, the Triple Helix Model has some fundamental problems relating to the well-functioning of the community of science as the producer of reliable knowledge. There is considerable work on how to achieve well-ordered science through theoretical and practical frameworks that aim to organize the relationship between the aforementioned actors. But one mode of production in the field of computer science, namely Free and Open-Source Software can be examined to shed light on the research on well-organized science. In this approach, certain mechanisms that stem from the community of computer science (which consists of computer scientists and end-users) regulate the relationship between corporations, the government, and the community of computer science. The second section briefly explains the Triple Helix Model, its history, as well as its problematic aspects. The third section explains Free and Open-Source Software, its history, and its mechanisms. In the fourth section, the interaction between Free and Open-Source and the Triple Helix Model is examined, and the solutions that Open-Source brings are discussed. In the last section, the shortcomings of Open-Source are brought up, and a conclusion is provided.
What is the Triple Helix Model of Science (THM)?
2.1 The Liberal Model
In order to understand the Triple Helix Model, we first need to briefly explain the Liberal Model that precedes it. In the Liberal Model, the main source of grants and patents are the state. Both the science community (mostly research centers and universities) and corporations seek grants for the research and the resulting patents belong to the state. Even though the Liberal Model has its weaknesses, it allows the universities to allocate the resources given by the government freely, meaning that even if scientists wish to do research on very niche fields, they can follow their own desires. This also allows the conduction of basic science, which does not necessarily have immediate benefits to the society or the conduction of science itself but has proven that it has invaluable uses in the long term, and nuclear energy is a major example. Also, since the scientists did not have any extra benefits from their research except for the prestige and recognition, they could stay disinterested and conduct their research honestly, at least to a certain degree.
2.2 The Triple Helix Model
After the 1980s, the social structure of science changed dramatically, resulting in the Triple Helix Model. In this model, funding of research is predominantly done by corporations as Research and Development (R&D) projects. Governments also fund R&D, but an overwhelming proportion of R&D funding comes from the private sector (Irzık, 2022). Intellectual property rights are much more aggressive as companies aim to get the patents or shared ownership of patents of the research they fund and prevent the disclosure of certain processes such as data collection, how data was handled, the patent details, and the methods of reproduction. This means that scientific knowledge is commodified, belonging to companies that fund its production. Also, industry and universities have novel ways of working together. One well-known example of this is the technology parks at university campuses, in which researchers use both university and private sector resources. Since it was less costly, companies outsource universities instead of having their own independent laboratories. On the other hand, scientists have a channel of possible gains: money. Therefore, they try to get contracts and collaborate with companies to continue their research, and sometimes abide by the rules of the private sector. As a result, universities are becoming entrepreneurial and profit-driven, and the control of what research would be funded shifts to the trends of the market and what is profitable. These characterize the Triple Helix Model, in which the state, the industry, and the scientific community collaborate in various combinations.
The triple helix model creates vulnerabilities in the community of science by undermining the values and norms of science to produce reliable knowledge, also known as the Mertonian norms. These norms are universalism, communalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (Merton & Storer, 1998). They are valuable for the well-functioning of science within the scientific community. Through non-disclosure agreements, THM creates gaps between the research done by a scientist and the community, not allowing free interaction, sharing, and criticism of ideas/research, undermining the norm of communalism. Also, THM provides scientists an additional motivation for financial gain which undermines the disinterestedness principle of the scientific community. The profit-driven market damages the production of reliable knowledge, which is the ultimate goal of science. Another problem created by THM is that bias is introduced to research (Sismondo, 2008) which inhibits organized skepticism and disinterestedness.
What is Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS)?
To explain Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), first, it is important to note that what is at hand is the open-source mode of production, not the open-source social movement, even though the two are closely related. In the sense of the mode of production, FOSS is about the organization of the community of computer scientists, the private sector, and members of the public who use the products of the private sector. The idea of open-source software is software with the source code accessible by everyone so that it can be inspected, modified, and improved by anyone. Anyone can create a copy of the code, modify it, and put it next to the code they took, so the community can decide which is better. And the modified code can be sold as well, under certain mechanisms of the FOSS. At the first glance, the idea might seem to undermine competition and kill creativity as well as the motivation for working on something new, but that is not the case. As it will be shown, open-source has fostered a competitive environment for computer scientists, corporations, and end-product users, manifesting and embodying parallel characteristics with the values of science.
In this section, open-source software will be examined with its history, successes, and mechanisms, following the work of Boldrin and Levine (2010).
Many of the great inventions that are still in use occurred (or have influenced cutting-edge technology that we use today) when software was not even patentable, such as the compilers, assemblers, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), linked lists, object-oriented programs, databases, search algorithms, font displays, word processing, and computer languages. These happened before 1981, when the Supreme Court decision in Diamond v. Diehr, changed the tradition of unpatentable software. And even after when it could and would be copyrighted, the copyright would not be respected as it is in the other fields of science. One reason for this was the customers: users would use programs in different systems, or share with one another, violating license agreements. It is true that copyright reduced copying software, but eventually, did not completely prevent it.
Free and open-source software has shown that innovation is not a result of copyrights and intellectual monopoly. The relationship is the very opposite. Only after a dynamic period of creativity, success, and innovation, do copyrights come into play. Once, pioneers of technology and research, who now have run out of exciting ideas, need government protection against their new competitors with creative ideas to drive the engine of success. Fresh ideas are blocked by the “old ways”, not for the promotion of creativity and innovation but for the protection of profit. The software industry, by relinquishing copyrights and patentable software voluntarily, created an innovative and competitive environment. Instead of copyright, they release the software under a “copyleft” license, which forces the sellers of copylefted software also allow the software to be copied by the competitors. This voluntary agreement protects free competition from intellectual monopoly. The motivation is not only about the values of FOSS, but there are also many cases in which only being able to enter the market is very profitable and a monopoly in the market is not worth seeking. Well-known and worth mentioning examples of open-source software would be Linux, which is one of the three major operating systems, that is also used by Mac OS and Google, and many major database management systems (DBMS) MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, the scripting language PHP, and many popular programming languages, with the examples of Python and Ruby. As it can be seen, open-source software has been a huge success.
The aforementioned free software license is known as the GNU General Public License, allowing software source code to be made public and sold with the condition of the modified code to be under the same license. Free, accessible software allows the contribution of many parties, and also makes their contribution freely available, promising the users of the software access to the source code as well. Programmers from around the world collaborate in a loosely organized way, forming teams or individually working, contributing themselves and benefiting from each other’s contributions. This is an incentive for both the contributing and benefiting sides, as any contribution can lead to a team of programmers competing and collaborating with others, in the end, helping them develop their software even further.
And finally, how open-source software does not undermine profitability can be explained by a concrete example. Linux, as mentioned before is an open-source operating system. Its source code can be accessed and modified by anyone. Red Hat customized the Linux system it accessed for free by developing many useful features, and later on putting its package on the market for $59.95. And as explained before, the Red Hat package is also open-source, thus accessible by others. Two other companies, HCI Design, and Linux Emporium attempted to sell the Red Hat package at much cheaper prices of around $16. But even though their prices were much more affordable, they could not sell as much and had to redraw from the Linux market, and Red Hat kept its place. The reason is the prestige of Red Hat as a company and the trust people put in them, as well as the technical support that can be provided the best by Red Hat since they wrote the code. Red Hat is still one of the industry leaders with many offices worldwide.
How does FOSS interact with THM?
The triple helix model of the social organization of science has certain weaknesses and problems as briefly explained in Section 2. FOSS addresses some of these problems in a way that can be applied to the other fields of sciences as well. First, it is very compatible with the norms and values of science in a bold way, and second, it interacts with the private industry and actually manages to put pressure on the industry in a successful way. The following subsections are about how FOSS manages these.
4.1 Coexistence of the norms of science and private industry
Free and open-source partly incorporates Mertonian norms in its values. Even though there is no active mechanism against discrimination in FOSS (this is not what FOSS is concerned with), any programmer can contribute to ongoing research and implementations, and share their ideas within the community. What matters is the contribution. This is in line with the universalism norm.
Communalism is very important for FOSS. It is one of its core values, allowing the whole community of researchers and programmers to freely share their ideas and innovations, as well as benefit from others’ work. Progress and intra-community flow of ideas and resources are not hindered by the motivation of profit. FOSS is so valuable for creativity and competition that even the largest companies in the industry have open-source departments, they host open-source contests, projects, or events that programmers from all around the world can join. Profit is not an enemy of progress.
Researchers or programmers might have personal gains from their work, but this does not hurt the disinterestedness norm, because the code is easily accessible and open to scrutiny by others. If their work has certain shortcomings due to their personal interests, members of the community will use the source code to do it better. This is one of the most important advantages of open source.
Since the code is accessible and modifiable by all; correction, optimization, and improvement are swift. Members of the FOSS community collaborate with scrutiny and aim to achieve the best of their potential through competition. Private industry often takes advantage of this and rewards the individuals who find bugs or inefficiency in their code. Therefore, FOSS also incorporates the norm of organized skepticism.
4.2 Community vs. corporation – Open Source vs. Intellectual Monopoly
The market competition and the commodification of knowledge create certain problems for science. Since the industry funds most of the research and holds the patents, it has a serious amount of control over the results of research. Non-disclosure agreements or patents prevent the rest of the industry or researchers to benefit from successful research or question it. The mechanisms of FOSS can be a valuable asset against the power the market holds over the scientific community. The code being open-source sure is very effective, but also pressures the industry to stay close to open-source. A remarkable example of this is MariaDB and MySQL. MySQL is a database management system, created by Michael Widenius and his cofounders and released in 1995 under free software license. It is important to note that the founders chose to release it open source because “they have been using free software for 10+ years and wanted to give something back” and also it “did not hurt their income”. MySQL was first bought by Sun in 2008, and in 2009 Oracle started to acquire Sun. This meant that the original founders did not have control over the copyright management of MySQL from then on. Hence Widenius decided to work on the current version of MySQL independently, gathering a team of software developers (that also include the founders of MySQL) who would want to contribute to an open-source version of MySQL, which was named MariaDB (Widenius, 2017). Because MariaDB will “always be open source”, and open source has many advantages for the users, it creates strong competition for Oracle. Since then, Oracle has not changed its copyright for MySQL, and MySQL stays open source as well. Thanks to the endeavors of Widenius and the community, MySQL and MariaDB are two competitive open-source software that is still in use today. This historical example demonstrates how open source can be of use against the industry and the intellectual property rights which hinder better research, better end products, and creativity.
4.3 What are some weaknesses or shortcomings of FOSS with respect to THM?
One of the problems created by THM is that scientists cannot commit to basic/pure research as they wish, because finding funds is much more difficult compared to industry-focused applied research. The material incentives or support are insufficient because there is no immediate gain from pure science. Free and open-source software is not a remedy to this problem for now, but the relationship between science and the industry, and how it could be organized by using the values of free and open-source software is open to further examination.
Also, even though FOSS has shown a path that can be followed and emphasized more, a lot of the code that is written today is still not open source, and corporations keep their profit-driven approach in the same way with their R&D projects, and the tension between the helixes of the model remains.
Conclusion
Free and open-source software has managed to deal with serious threats from the industry through fostering creativity and innovation as well as maintaining competition and collaboration at the same time. There is a lot to learn from the values and practices of FOSS for science to function well in THM. Science can resist the private industry the same way open-source does by using similar tools, creating an Open Science/Research that can put pressure over the industry using the “copyleft” approach, having its own competitive mechanisms and pulling the industry closer to itself. The discussion of free and open-source software and science is open to further questions and contributions.
References
- Boldrin, M., & Levine, D. K. (2010). Chapter 2: Creation under Competition. In Against intellectual monopoly (pp. 15–22). essay, Cambridge University Press.
- Irzık, G. 2022, Changing Social Organization of Science and its Impact on Research and Universities, PHIL 450 – Science and Society lecture slides.
- Merton, R. K., & Storer, N. W. (1998). The Normative Structure of Science . In The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (pp. 267–278). essay, University of Chicago Press.
- Sismondo, S. (2008). Pharmaceutical company funding and its consequences: A qualitative systematic review. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 29(2), 109–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cct.2007.08.001
- Widenius, M. (2017, February 17). MySQL-MariaDB History talk. [MariaDB website]. https://mariadb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/MySQL-MariaDB-story.pdf