Dan Shearer — who controls a technology once everyone uses it?
Open source, software IP, privacy regulation, and health data.
Who is in control, and how do we control it ourselves? I find these questions in AI, tech giant monopolies, privacy law, and health research, and I do a lot of work in the attempt to change the answers.
If you’re here about…
…AI ethics or agentic systems: safety belongs in the structure around AI, not inside it, and reliable structure improves on what AI companies offer. We copy how human organisations have worked for thousands of years in our tool the Perseverance Composition Engine ↗, which implements the novel idea of Artificial Organisations. These address big problems in AI.
…medical research, biobanks, epidemiology or data ethics: Who owns health data? My work in epidemiology covers One Health and rule-based malaria modelling. My related Medical Snapshot informally models causality paradoxes in longitudinal studies, compared in practice against 26 systems used in the last 90 years. The Active Heat Exchanger is a cheap device to improve indoor air quality which also generates life-saving data unavailable anywhere at present. Radiophobia is an easy-to-read explainer for a widespread medical problem I personally experienced.
…open source & computer science: Samba and its official history have many lessons for today. LumoSQL applies some of these lessons at larger scale, and adds some new thinking about databases. Computer security analysis led me to consider intent, starting with Margaret Hamilton and software intent.
…IP, governance and regulation: Data Mobility issues post-Brexit (eg GDPR Article 27) are an ever-evolving painful reality for UK organisations, while much larger EU–US Privacy battles might be coming to a showdown in 2026, and paracopyright is the new way to extort entire populations. Often the large companies ignore regulation while claiming compliance, and other times the regulation has surprising wrinkles such as facts buried in GDPR Article 28.
…me as an advisor, expert witness, or collaborator: I work with founders, boards and courts on software IP, privacy regulation, and open-source strategy. Background and contacts.
…my interests, and your contributions and corrections: Errors, missing references, and additions welcome; the site challenge has the details.
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Samba, and LumoSQL
Samba is the open-source software that shares files between Windows, Mac and Linux in probably a billion devices today. Microsoft spent decades trying to shut the project down. Full story in the official history and the timeline of battles lost and won: in brief, Samba survived well but Microsoft survived better, shaping the way tech giants behave today. LumoSQL might be at the beginning of a similar journey, since it is a combination of software each of which
is much more widely used than Samba. At least that is the intention of LumoSQL, to make new kinds of privacy an option for all mobile devices in as short a time
as possible.
More: AI and agentic systems · health and research · open source · law and privacy
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