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The work of John Tate belongs to mankind. Why is not online in pdf´s? Who is dirty enough to earn money on HIS work?

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    $\begingroup$ Tate's papers on Inventiones are freely available via Goettingen University online library. Other papers might be more difficult to find online for free, but usually one can obtain them via universities subscription or inter library loan. That said, the discussion should not be on Tate alone, but on the principle of paywall. And, at any rate, it is off-topic here. gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/id/PPN356556735 $\endgroup$
    – Francesco Polizzi
    Commented Jan 31, 2021 at 8:36

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As it is mentioned in the comments, some of his papers are available, but you have to search. Of course, your remark about "belongs to mankind" concerns not only Tate but almost all mathematicians. Their work is payed for by the society, essentially by taxpayers, and therefore it should be in open access. But publishers tend to appropriate it to make profit.

Of course you cannot blame publishers, since they are mostly private enterprise and their primary goal is to make money for their investors, rather than benefit the mankind. So to the question "who is responsible for this situation" the answers probably are: a) mathematical community itself, which delegated publishing business to the big private corporations, and b) legislatures which make draconian copyright laws (to benefit the publishers). Nowadays, the situation changes somewhat because of the existence of arXiv. Mathematicians who understand that their work "belongs to mankind" post all their work to the arXiv.

Unfortunately this does not apply to old papers, which are simply appropriated by corporations. They used to be in the public domain (through university libraries, which used to be open to everyone), but now, with transition to digitalization, they become private property more and more.

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  • $\begingroup$ Indeed what would be needed is a copyright law which makes authors benefit from their works (and not primarily publishers like now) -- and which makes scientific publications exempt from copyright, also retroactively. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl ♦
    Commented Mar 20, 2021 at 19:28

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