Linux for Lettuce

Lots of opportunity for extended terminology quibbling with this one. This article ends up equating "Linux" with 'open source (licenses)', (and "hackers"..?). Concluding that applying the same approach for agriculture, specifically seed production, would be a good thing, (which likely it would be). Perhaps the authors should arrange to lock Mr Torvalds and Mr Stallman in a small room together to appreciate their 'equivalence'.

"... One fateful morning in Minneapolis, Michaels awoke with a Linux-inspired epiphany: What if we did the same thing with our seeds? Just like hackers, he and his colleagues would make their germplasm “free” by attaching a license that kept it in the public domain."

All this started with General Electric and Chakrabarty winning the patent case against the Patent Office over patenting life forms.

If it wasn't for SCOTUS going in favor of Chakrabarty, we would not be in this mess.

This seems like a rather important issue that few people know about. The fact that the majority of the crops being planted today are the intellectual property of and controlled by some monster GMO food companies really means we could end up in a bind in the future.

"Food Inc." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Inc.) is an excellent documentary that explains some of the major problems with this system.