[TOS] A university tech transfer policy on open source that I can understand

[Mel Chua]

I was reading this article, 
http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/wordpress/2011/04/disrupting-centralized-linear-university-model/, 
on university IP policies and how they might evolve for open 
source/hardware/content/etc considerations in the future.

I don't know how that article looks to an academic - I'd be interested 
in hearing how it sounds from the trenches - but it links to Stanford's 
policy... which makes *sense* to me. I'm stunned. I've never been able 
to understand anything from a tech transfer office before!

http://otl.stanford.edu/inventors/resources/inventors_opensource.html

It even asks "What are you hoping to achieve?"
* broad adoption in the academic community?
* is your code synergistic with widely open sourced applications like Linux?
* broad adoption in industry?
* continued development by others?

Heck, I don't know if most developers and *companies* think this through 
properly when they consider open-sourcing their work. Wow. Breath of 
fresh air.

Idealistic? I know a few profs here have been encountering some IP 
discussions with their school lately about 
licensing/commercialization/etc of open source student work, and I'm 
curious whether this helps, or whether these are all great ideas y'all 
already know about but the battle to implement them somewhere else is 
just really hard and long and slow.

--Mel