[hackerspaces] I'm not helping when DARPA Selects Hackerspace ...

[Stewart Dickson]

Just weighing-in with a few observations based on experience.

"Any tool can be used as a weapon if you hold it the wrong way."

DARPA is not a branch of the armed services, themselves.  In fact, the 
US Army has its own research lab.  DARPA's main job is helping soldiers 
to do their jobs better and to live longer doing
it.  1/4 of my salary was paid by DARPA between 2003-2005 -- and the 
medical community
at large thought that the Virtual Soldier Project was just the bee's knees.

DARPA didn't invent the internet any more than AT&T Bell Labs, UC 
Berkeley, the NCSA or CERN did.   The ARPANet was one of the first 
centralized long-haul backbones, which is not necessarily
the best thing to be.   NSFNet and *RENs are better.

I looked at the MENTOR program description and it explicitly states that 
all intellectual
property developed by the HackerSpace stays with the HackerSpace.   It's 
when what gets
developed at the HackerSpace starts looking to be pushed on to 
commercialization that things
will get dicey -- which can be said about any project developed at a 
HackerSpace.

Working on any kind of funded contract is going to change things within 
the HackerSpace.
It's going to be up to the HackerSpace to decide what that means.

I looked at the MakeZine blog this morning and was a bit repulsed by a 
commercial that jumped out at me.  So, maybe Make Magazine has worse 
problems than just DARPA?