I'm too lazy to read the article (hey at least I'm honest), but I think you can have a working science/news with plagiarism.
In our western culture everything is egocentric. You work hard to be remembered for milenia for wonderful things that you've done. We try to mention who first observed or invented something (even though it often happens in multiple places at once and only the most popular and best marketed person gets the mention), but those people rarely care. Mostly because they are dead, but also PG's latest essay[1].
You can have equally valid, working and moral system where it's rewarding enough when your pattern is getting spread rather than anybody caring that it was made by you. It seems to even be going in that direction with the youngest generation, memes and stuff.
And reputation still works. You assign weight to given entity based on previous information that it provided. Whether it was "invented" or merely repeated doesn't matter.
I am not convinced reputation would work the same way, or that plagiarism isn't bad, but I definitely agree with the ego-centrism in the modern scientific world. I personally think it is a moral hazard and is something that discourages and robs the enjoyment of many people in the field. It is better to focus on the beauty of the ideas than the "beauty" of the reputation of the one who proposed the ideas.
I think you bring up good points. I think the only difference between Open Source and Proprietary software is that one you're allowed to plagiarize, and the other you're not. In the end, Open Source wins as it automatically gets way more exposure and users, as anyone can access, copy, modify and freely share it forever.
I know we won't be able to get an answer to this question unless it actually goes to court (and I haven't seen anything about this any court), but couldn't you take any MIT licensed project, replace the license with your own and it'd be legal? My understanding is the license means you're allowed to freely modify anything related to the project (unless someone has a trademark/copyright of course)
The GPLv3 specifically requires copyright notices to be kept in tact on verbatim copies. Other popular Open Source licenses have more stringent attribution requirements. Plagiarism is definitely not inherent to Open Source, though it may be inherent in some licenses.
In our western culture everything is egocentric. You work hard to be remembered for milenia for wonderful things that you've done. We try to mention who first observed or invented something (even though it often happens in multiple places at once and only the most popular and best marketed person gets the mention), but those people rarely care. Mostly because they are dead, but also PG's latest essay[1].
You can have equally valid, working and moral system where it's rewarding enough when your pattern is getting spread rather than anybody caring that it was made by you. It seems to even be going in that direction with the youngest generation, memes and stuff.
And reputation still works. You assign weight to given entity based on previous information that it provided. Whether it was "invented" or merely repeated doesn't matter.
1. http://paulgraham.com/genius.html