Latha Jishnu: The appeal of Jefferson's open source model

PATENTLY ABSURD

The first time I interacted with Jefferson was in early 2005. That's when Cambia startled the scientific community, specifically, the world of biotechnology, by offering free to researchers the basic tools of inventions affecting human and plant life. It was called the BIOS initiative or the Biological Innovation for Open Society, a well-thought move to spur innovation by collaborative means. In one of the first interviews he gave on the subject, Jefferson provided a passionate explanation of his philosophy. Innovation in science was being hedged in by the patents thicket and we needed to adopt the Linux model of open source development. BIOS and Bioforge, the online research toolkit offered by Cambia, would work on the same ideals as the open source software movement: everything is offered free but anyone using the technology has to help in improving the core toolkit.

Jefferson's crusade is an old one. It started in 1987 when he offered his patented discovery, the beta-glucuronidase reporter gene system (GUS), to whoever wanted it at whatever price they could afford. In fact, he gave it away free to several hundred laboratories. The GUS reporter gene system is said to be the most widely used tool in plant molecular biology and the basis on which a variety of crops from rice and wheat to soybean and cotton have been transformed genetically. In fact, it is with the help of Gus that the US multinational Monsanto, which has a near monopoly on agricultural biotech products, developed its blockbuster product Roundup Ready. One dreads to think of what would have happened if the reverse had been the case