Over the weekend, Joi Ito (the director of the MIT Media Lab among a long list of other awesome things) announced that the MIT Media Lab Changes Software Default to FLOSS*

As someone who disdains software patents and is appalled by universities, especially publicly funded ones, acting as patent trolls, I applaud the MIT Media Lab’s move.

Eric von Hippel, my PhD advisor at MIT (I didn’t finish) and one of my early mentors, co-wrote two of the seminal papers on how free and open source software (FOSS – and now FLOSS) impacts innovation.

• How Open Source software works:  “Free” user-to-user assistance
• Open Source Software and the “Private-Collective” Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science

Joi’s punch line says it all.

“As an academic institution, we believe that in many cases we can achieve greater impact by sharing our work.”

I couldn’t agree more and applaud Joi’s vision and leadership.