Why do some criticize Open Access?

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I study library science on of my teacher is avid supporter of open access, Open software, open access journal and so on.


I just wonder why some people criticize the free access stuff, that free product is have poorer quality in contrast to commercial products.

Maybe the critics are afraid more people are going to learn something

Because stuff costs money to research and make. Open access means you're dependent (AFAIK) on the good will of the users to survive.

There is a myth the open source mean it must cost nothing. This is a misunderstanding of the concept of open source. Open source mean you allow people to view copy an modify without warranty. You aren't obliged to work for nothing, nor are you obliged to provide free support. There are certain thing that may be encourage to foster a community, but nothing is obligatory.

People have to eat, an make a living. So they need funds to give something away for nothing. It is time consuming don't think software development is easy. Time = money.

The reason why people think open source means "free s**t", is they are not contributing to the projects, or developing related software for it. They only know handouts.

As a programer I will tell you that OS has to be funded. Every project is different so the mean tot fun it not always the same, because one finding model may not work for that application.

Also there is a copy-left extreme who write licenses as convoluted and restricted as the worst propriety licenses. But if you take GitHib the larges public repository, after the Linux kernel, the majority of software on there is license as permissive OS license like MIT, not copy left. This is becuase they want their software to be free of restrictions.

I have worked with GPL2 software and have respected the license when I am. I will not work with GPL3, it it he most convoluted and restrictive license I have seen, with masses of side-effects for developers. Their slogan "Free as in Freedom" is ironic., not free at all. Generally I license MIT or similar, but I'm a strong believer of choosing the appropriate license for the application. Unlike those fan people who license the same without really knowing the nuances of the license nor

There is a saying that you can't have your cake an eat it too. OS can be a great business strategy done right, but it has to be balanced and consider strategy. There isn't a one size fit all approach, and it is rarely all of the business plan.

Open access has to be part of the education solution, it is not the only solution however. One of the aims of open access, is actually to make it cheaper to publish research and also make it more evident to the scientific community.

One of the problem with research, even peer reviewed, is if they aren't funded well it get publish in one of the lesser journal and nobody reads it, then some other related well funded research is published in the main journals, there is not cross analysis, becuase people aren't aware of the first research.

In fundamental research, typically neither the authors, nor the reviewers get money for the article from the sales. Probably few people except the publishers oppose the concept of open access. But most prestigious journals are not open access, and many open access journals are of low quality. However, it is becoming less of a problem as many authors (at least in maths) put their articles on their websites or on preprint servers. Articles from times when there was no internet are sometimes hard to find.

Open source programs are a very different area than open access articles, since programs are, in a large part, written for profit. Authors of open source programs can be divided into programmers who write open source programs for profit for various reasons (hardware companies who make money from the hardware, not the software; companies selling support; etc); academic instututes; and hobby programmers (while these won't write, say, a mainstream OS kernel, many popular applications are written by them). GPL, though complicated, largely only restricts you if you are trying to make non-free software based on it; it's hardly more restrictive than a typical "all rights reversed" which only lets you use the software, and even that often with EULA restrictions.

It should be up to the individual owner. Software development and research costs money and has to be paid for somehow.

It is very restrictive though for instance, if you have an OS framework technically all is developed on these framework has to be GLP, unless the originator explicitly uses their discretion.

This is why software languages, meta languages, widely used frameworks and libraries, it is difficult to conceive distributing under GPL.

This is why jquery was released as as a license like MIT not GPL. If if was released as GPL originally then it would have never been used so widely. Yes it was dual license for a brief period, but note there is big differnce from being releases under GPL originally, than permissive then dual licensed with GPL. Under the first example it would not become permissive. The only option is a more restrictive version of GPL. The only reason why it was dual-licensed is Drupal told them they neede to, when actually, when jquery is redistributed with drupal it is can be re-lichened anyway (being permissive), so the onus is not on the jquery guy to dual license it as GPL, which is why they got shot of it thankfully.

I think ideology behind GLP is guilty of the very things it claims to be protecting against. There is a movement in the GPL community to restrict non-distributed SaaS, despite SaaS being a major source of funding for OS, including many well known GPL. OS is about distribution, non-distribution is obviously not covered nor should it. If someone want to license AGPL fine, as long as the don't evangelize why SaaS is inherently bad, when it funds OS projects.

Many project that are on GPL2 will never move to GPL3 becuase it is minefield of side-effects they do not even want to consider the implications. This is want ideology, which no pragmatism does.

Yes, GPL is not suitable for libraries; less restrictive licenses such as LGPL or MIT are suitable for them. (GPL can be suitable when a company wants to make a framework free for free software but sell it for money for proprietary software developers, as with Qt before 4.5.)


Making it GPL v2 or later creates the least amount of problems as far as GPL goes.

I think that you might have missed one of the problems with academic publishing, the journal is never free. The old model was that a library would pay for a subscription to a journal and this would cover the costs of running it. The open access journals do not charge subscription fees, anyone can read them for free.

But many of them charge the authors of papers a fee to publish, so now instead of paying to read the journal you must pay to publish a paper. This is a problem, it is a possible barrier preventing people from publishing their work becuase they can not afford the fees.

The journal could be almost free. Today it needs not be printed (it can be electronic) and the authors do the formatting themselves. Typically the reviewers and the editorial board don't recieve money. There may be small administrative costs with dispatching the articles to the reviewers and with maintaining servers, but they don't support the prices charged IMHO.

Well some open access journals are trying to make as much money as possible by charging fees which are too high. The problem is that it takes time to run a journal, I rather like the idea of the green model where a paper is published free of charge in an on line journal and then anyone can comment on it.

The gold model is where the author has to pay a fee to publish, some journals charge a fee both to read them and to publish in them which is the worst of both worlds.