Linux for lettuce (Opensource.com)
Opensource.com covers
the founding of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) and its
continuing efforts to apply the concepts of open-source to plant breeding,
in an increasingly patent encumbered space.
"OSSI’s de facto leader is Jack Kloppenburg, a social scientist at
the University of Wisconsin who has been involved with issues concerning
plant genetic resources since the 1980s. He has published widely about the
concept behind OSSI, and his words are now echoed (even copied verbatim) by
public plant-breeding advocates in Germany, France, and India. As he
explains it, for most of human history, seeds have naturally been part of
the commons—those natural resources that are inherently public, like air or
sunshine. But with the advent of plant-related intellectual property and
the ownership it enables, this particular part of the commons has become a
resource to be mined for private gain. Thus the need for a protected
commons—open source seed. Inspired by open source software, OSSI’s idea is
to use “the master’s tools” of intellectual property, but in ways the
master never intended: to create and enforce an ethic of sharing."