Timothy writes: >> > I'll get way more help from my >> > students, and if THEY contribute, I have no choice but to let SUNY own >> it. >> >> I would think that the students would own their work? > > Not sure.
I suspect that most, probably all contributors would be okay with some form of FLOSS licence (GPL/MIT/BSDL/whatever) that will allow for academic research, use by individuals, etc. It is the commercial use that may cause problems. One problem is if someone is going to make money off it, then they want their share. Another is if the company wants to make it closed source. Another is the no-use-for-evil issue, where everyone has their own list of organizations that they consider evil. Requiring copyright transfer would drive away some contributors, and we'd never know how many. We don't have that many contributors to begin with, so we can't afford to drive some away. So it looks like commercial users may need to negotiate with multiple contributors. Which isn't the end of the world. >> > NYS would take 60% of any revenue >> >> I assume NYS = New York State. >> >> So this 60% goes where? Some NYS general fund? And therefore >> goes to some random mixture of good and bad things? > > I'm assuming most of it stays within BU and the SUNY system. If it isn't in the contract, assume it will be used for something fairly evil. (Like most taxes are.) Anything less evil is a bonus. > Frankly, if they're any good at marketing (and not just the tech transfer > department but also PR who likes to mine what faculty do for newsworthy > items that make BU look good), If they were any good at marketing/PR, I would have heard of BU before you started posting about them on the list. The university with marketing/PR is MIT. Occasionally I see something about research from Purdue, Stanford, UC-*, etc., but MIT has the lion's share. > that remaining 40% is likely to be greater > than whatever we would have made otherwise. This leads, in my estimation > to the increase in: The probability of completing the project, the > probability of licensing it, and the total revenue. All good things. The BU deal may be the best available. I'm playing devil's advocate and poking at it in an attempt to make sure it is acceptable and the best available. > Oh, that makes me think: Using BU resources, we could fab chips, and BU > could sell them. (Probably. I'm not sure if this happens much.) Does BU have their own fab? How many generations behind is it? How is their yield? Fabbing chips is *hard*. Even connecting the die to the package can be hard. Large companies have major problems. Small companies fail and go out of business. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
