PHILOSOPHY

The blossoming of Science and the Industrial Revolution has been a phenomenon very unique to the western world. The answer to this question has never been very clear in the major traditionnale political ideologies In neoliberal ideologies, the hero is the entrepreneur ( and the inventor ? ) In socialist ideologies, the collective hero is the working class A major factor, in my opinion, is a the less articulated current of thought in favour of freely sharing knowledge but there has been no "ideologies, flags and rallies" behind it, until recently when it has been recognized that sharing knowledge is an essential ingredient to sustainable developement. People also, because of the developement of the Internet, a tool that considerably lowers the cost of sharing knowledge, and make it possible on a wide scale, are evolving from a "Consummer's Society" towards a Knowledge Society. Why it took so long to recognize the role of knowledge sharing ? : because the social status of those were practising it was diverse, without cohesion : People of independents means ( Darwin, Engels ), Clerics ( Copernic, Mendel ), University ( Newton, but not the French University ), Aristocrats (De Broglie), Laboratory clerks (Cavendish ?), etc... Free Software can be justified, in context wider than the context of Science, solely on the basis of Freedom requirements. However, and this is reinforcing the case for Free Software, in Science, Scientific Software must be free even more so, because software is simply a record of intellectual knowledge that is executed by a machine ( instead of human brain ? )