Open Source Breeding

Hi everyone,

Landed on this article during the weekend.

Pretty interesting approach IMO. This is basically what we've been doing underground but now official with an open source license. It seems some growers alliances can issue open source breeding licenses.

Has anyone heard of it before?

interesting concept hopefully people play nice and don't issue patents on the crosses they make or worse issue patents on landraces and other peoples work.

I think it is immoral to issue a patent on a living organism.

it will be interesting to see where this mainstream cannabis movement is going, hopefully unique landraces and unique strains in general will be preserved and we can
keep cannabis from being fully homegenized.

stressing the importance of maintaining landraces for future generations is highly important now there are more routes for trade.

Hard to say at this point where it will be but hopefully some people whether at home or hired by a corporation will do the right thing and care about the plant. The most imprtant part to me.

others peoples work should be free to build on so as to help all of society

Seems like a giant ADDvert for st.r.ainly!!!
However...

For many crops, the number of commonly available cultivars has experienced a drastic reduction over the years, and today, the apples or tomatoes you find across the world are much less diverse than they were a few decades ago. Notably, today’s fruits, vegetables, and cereal crops globally consumed are increasingly grown from patented varieties or cultivars. Many of them are genetically engineered (GMOs), particularly cereals and grains.

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...I do not want to see cannabis go in this direction!

in our bid for legalization, we’ve incidentally introduced a new threat: large corporations may start taking over cannabis genetics from the people who spent their entire lives building this industry. And the same folks may facilitate the corporate takeover while trying to protect us against it.

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Eventually patents result in a locked genetic landscape, where innovation becomes rare and costly, and products eventually standardize.

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Once you have your “patent”, you are obligated to challenge any infringement on your rights and therefore spend even more money, or else risk losing your patent.

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Cannabis breeders considering patenting their plants may be doing the paperwork for corporate takeover.

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It seems to me that this OPEN PROJECT idea has been going on for some time now.
Maybe not cooperatively but it has been happening for sure.

Folks purchase gear and reproduce it and cross it to whatever they feel it fits and the progeny gets passed around and the cycle starts again. As long as seeds remain high priced, the trend will continue.


Breeders that are raising their seed prices in todays market are literally shooting themselves in both feet! Prices should be getting LOWER so that their gear can be MORE AFFORDABLE so that people will want to, rather than avoid, purchase their gear!
It seems breeders EXPECT folks to reproduce their gear.
This would NOT be the case if their gear was AFFORDABLE so there is absolutely nothing to argue here!

Burro Johnson said:

interesting concept hopefully people play nice and don't issue patents on the crosses they make or worse issue patents on landraces and other peoples work.

I think it is immoral to issue a patent on a living organism.

it will be interesting to see where this mainstream cannabis movement is going, hopefully unique landraces and unique strains in general will be preserved and we can
keep cannabis from being fully homegenized.

stressing the importance of maintaining landraces for future generations is highly important now there are more routes for trade.

Hard to say at this point where it will be but hopefully some people whether at home or hired by a corporation will do the right thing and care about the plant. The most imprtant part to me.

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There is NO need to worry about PATENTS!
Only cultivars can be patented, not varieties.
Varieties can, however, get Plant Variety Protection.
Similar but not exactly the same thing.

Burro Johnson said:

interesting concept hopefully people play nice and don't issue patents on the crosses they make or worse issue patents on landraces and other peoples work.

I think it is immoral to issue a patent on a living organism.

it will be interesting to see where this mainstream cannabis movement is going, hopefully unique landraces and unique strains in general will be preserved and we can
keep cannabis from being fully homegenized.

stressing the importance of maintaining landraces for future generations is highly important now there are more routes for trade.

Hard to say at this point where it will be but hopefully some people whether at home or hired by a corporation will do the right thing and care about the plant. The most imprtant part to me.

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I agree with all of this The perspective of losing our strains is scary...

MJPassion said:

Seems like a giant ADDvert for st.r.ainly!!!
However...

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I don't know if they paid for the article but the issues they're raising are valid IMO

MJPassion said:

...I do not want to see cannabis go in this direction!


It seems to me that this OPEN PROJECT idea has been going on for some time now.
Maybe not cooperatively but it has been happening for sure.

Folks purchase gear and reproduce it and cross it to whatever they feel it fits and the progeny gets passed around and the cycle starts again. As long as seeds remain high priced, the trend will continue.

Click to expand...

I understand that in a prohibition context, we were not pray to corporations taking over our work. But now, with legalization, we need to get formal with Open Source licenses (like software developer started doing at scale in the 90s) to prevent these corporations from "stealing" our prior work...

MJPassion said:

Breeders that are raising their seed prices in todays market are literally shooting themselves in both feet! Prices should be getting LOWER so that their gear can be MORE AFFORDABLE so that people will want to, rather than avoid, purchase their gear!
It seems breeders EXPECT folks to reproduce their gear.
This would NOT be the case if their gear was AFFORDABLE so there is absolutely nothing to argue here!

Click to expand...

Never thought about it. Yes some seeds are not cheap but there are so many options at the same time...

They published a second article. Has anyone heard of their open source cannabis license before?