Tearing down those knowledge walls

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: Knowledge is open source. It cannot be curtailed and has to be freely available.

The concept of open source is not new. It is a subversive ideology that has been surfacing every now and then, setting it's mark on the pages of history.

For example, history testifies of Martin Luther's valiant efforts to translate the Bible into the common man's language, which started a tumult amongst the church hierarchy and marked the beginning of the protestant revolution. Until then, it was largely available in Latin Vulgate - restricting its use to only those who had the intellect to understand & interpret Latin. The Roman Catholic church's efforts in keeping biblical knowledge a closely guarded secret amongst church clergy and papal bureaucracy met a final end when the Bible was 'open sourced' to the common man in the 1380's.

Despite the execution penalty imposed on all those found with translated versions, it is noteworthy that this particular 'open source' movement could not be curtailed by proprietary protagonists. Today, the Bible is the world's best-selling and most widely distributed book, with more than 2.5 billion copies sold since 1815, and translations in over 2,233 languages and dialects.

Ayurveda is another example of the success of open source. All across the world, millions of documents have been written on the subject of Ayurveda, allowing people to benefit from the secrets of natural healing. Thousands of practitioners today have mastered the knowledge of Ayurveda, benefiting from the unlimited resources available in the open world.

This brings us to the logical question, "What if the originator of Ayurveda had decided to protect his knowledge with a license or an IPR?" Considering that this 'knowledge' is approximately 5000 years old, there's no doubt that he would be a serious contender for the position of the world's richest man today.

In stark contrast to Ayurveda, we have a closely guarded industry formed around life saving drugs today. The composition of these drugs is never disclosed and their labs follow strict codes of secrecy like military facilities. This means that a certain set of people are making billions of dollars at the expense of our community. Despite having the most amazing minds in this country, we sadly cannot afford to provide low cost, life saving drugs to our citizens on our own, all because somebody invented it first and doesn't want to open source their knowledge.