How an M&M Sparked the Search for the Next Perfect Peanut; The New York Times, July 24, 2025

 Kim Severson , The New York Times; How an M&M Sparked the Search for the Next Perfect Peanut

"As one of the largest privately held companies in the United States, Mars approaches agricultural research differently than many corporations. Like open-source software, the information its research produces is available for anyone to use or share with no patents or intellectual property rights standing in the way. The company has invested in similar research in cacao and mint, two other crops Mars cannot survive without.

It’s the way Forrest Mars, Sr., the billionaire who invented M&Ms, would have wanted it, Mars scientists say. In 1947 he declared mutuality — the idea that Mars’s success should also benefit others — as one of the company’s five core principles. It still guides the company, which had nearly $50 billion in sales in 2024. And it’s why they are all in on the Wild Peanut Lab."

An Open Source License That Requires Users to Do No Harm; Wired, October 4, 2019

Klint Finley, Wired;

An Open Source License That Requires Users to Do No Harm

Open source software can generally be freely copied and reused. One developer wants to impose ethical constraints on the practice.

"Increasingly, some developers are calling on their employers and the government to stop using their work in ways they believe are unethical...

Coraline Ada Ehmke wants to give her fellow developers more control over how their software is used. Software released under her new "Hippocratic License" can be shared and modified for almost any purpose, with one big exception: "Individuals, corporations, governments, or other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well-being of individuals or groups in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Defining what it means to do harm is inherently contentious, but Ehmke hopes that tying the license to existing international standards will reduce the uncertainty. The declaration of human rights "is a document that's 70 years old and is pretty well established and accepted for its definition of harm and what violating human rights really means," she says."

To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software; New York Times, August 3, 2017

R. James Woolsey and Brian J. Fox, New York Times; To Protect Voting,Use Open-Source Software

"If the community of proprietary vendors, including Microsoft, would support the use of open-source model for elections, we could expedite progress toward secure voting systems.

With an election on the horizon, it’s urgent that we ensure that those who seek to make our voting systems more secure have easy access to them, and that Mr. Putin does not."