[logicrook]

I couldn't agree much. If you look outside of CS and mathematics, where FLOSS principles are widely represented, in most domains it is very hard to access the knowledge. Besides the experts protecting their expertise, there are some fields where they actively try to discourage any such dissemination of knowledge to protect the interest of the trade -medicine, where there is also a question of accountability- or to protect society as a whole -the knowledge to make weapons and explosives. Obviously, these are important arguments you have to deal with when trying to convince somebody that open knowledge is a benefit to society. There's also quite a deal of effort that goes into making these resources available, so it's not just a problem of opening things.

Have a look at 'open source ecology', there are things existing, but this is still a long way from getting to the point where CS/math is.

You can also look at Earthships, a fairly utopian idea, and how far they are from embracing openness, despite their proclaimed philosophy.

[LeifCarrotson]

Medicine (and many other "closed" subjects) is widely taught in schools - it is not a secret guild.

You can also go to school for agriculture, to learn about the growth of crops and about livestock management. The difference is that this ocean farming is a new endeavor by a small group. It's not like CS or math where independent researchers can download a compiler or pick up a notebook and verify or extend other studies, you need years of work and large amounts of money.

Would there be pull requests for this if they opened it to the public?

[logicrook]

>Medicine (and many other "closed" subjects) is widely taught in schools - it is not a secret guild.

We agree, but you could as well say thus that closed software is not really closed since you can learn software in schools. It's different from having easily accessible knowledge, when it's hard to get actual data on many subjects (in some cases, this data is even actually protected by law).

>It's not like CS or math where independent researchers can download a compiler or pick up a notebook and verify or extend other studies, you need years of work and large amounts of money.

It's not so much of a problem. There are enough people out there that are ready to test the ideas and techniques. If you could find say a set of various setups that worked for a set of given conditions (with a good description of costs, encountered issues and output) then you could have people who can test it by themselves while changing the parts they don't like, and contribute their own data. There's a huge amount of money spent on experimenting already, however it's basically all done in a closed manner.

BTW, if you have "the secret guild" feeling out of my comment, it's because discussing with my physician friends, they clearly advocated for some principles in this spirit (irrevocability of the physician's opinion, unilateral defense of their interests regardless of any moral issue, etc). It may vary depending on your country, of course.

[coredog64]

Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity. Sure, medicine and law are widely taught. Those same two groups work to ensure that it's very difficult to acquire and apply that knowledge. Getting into med school is difficult and expensive, with a license to practice even more so.

[jsmthrowaway]

I'm not indicating whether I agree or disagree, but: the stakes are high with both. Bad lawyer can doom a client for the rest of his life. Bad doctor can take life. I expect compsci to become more difficult as our stakes continue to increase, and we are already getting there with Ashley Madison/USG level PII disclosures and mass surveillance engineering, for example. Some life or death fields within our own are already there or on their way.

Think about all the bad programmers you are aware of, and think about how many are employed. I believe medicine is trying to avoid that, somewhat understandably, with collateral damage against people who would otherwise be good doctors but are unlucky. Calling it a conspiracy might be a bit of a reach. Take that sentiment into watching Patch Adams, for example, and the big bad mean medical establishment might make a smidgen more sense. On grounds of dignity and tradition is one thing, but competency is another and I think the root of the conflict.

This is all interesting of course when you also, correctly, notice that there are many bad doctors and lawyers all the same. My ex-wife's divorce attorney needed help from my own understanding notary procedure (yes, really). But hard to say whether there are fewer with the system in place. Maybe there are.

Again, no opinion being shared on whether I agree with the practice or not (I'm honestly unsure, if you want the truth), just an observation. Maybe some of the issues in our industry, particularly incredibly lax security practices, might be mitigated with a bar to entry similar to medicine. I simply don't have that answer and I can see arguments on both sides.

[petra]

>> Think about all the bad programmers you are aware of, and think about how many are employed. I believe medicine is trying to avoid that, somewhat understandably, with collateral damage against people who would otherwise be good doctors but are unlucky.

It's not accurate.

We definitely know from the UK, Australia and Africa, that properly trained nurses can do well, many of the doctor's jobs, while increasing accessibility.

[agentultra]

Liability. If there were actuaries able to accurately assess the risk of your engineering practice you'd have a much different approach to software development in many niches than, "see what sticks and iterate."

My colleague is working towards becoming a licensed engineer in software. I'm learning a lot about formal methods from him in order to build more reliable software, faster.

If we really were software engineers then there would be a state of the art and if you employed any practices short of that you'd be liable for damages your software causes. And you'd probably go out of business pretty fast.

[datashovel]

I could certainly see "pull requests" happening for collaboration on open documentation / manuals / reference guides, etc.