On 8/28/06, Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
An assumption that some may challenge is that AGI
software should be free in the first place. I think
that this approach has proved useful for both software
(e.g. MySQL database) and knowledge (Wikipedia).
Could additional terms and conditions for an AGI open
source license retain these benefits yet be safe?
I would rather see a license which made the software free
for non-commercial use, but (unlike the GNU licenses)
stipulated terms, and methods of deciding fees that
would be binding on the software authors, so that a
company could use the software for commercial uses,
provided they paid the stipulated fees to the software
authors.
I know that most open-source advocates would
scream bloody murder at this, but that's because
people are guided by feelings rather than logic.
Clearly there is no harm done to the intended
beneficiaries of open-source, because they can still
use the software free. The only change is that authors
might get paid. This should greatly increase the effort
put into open-source software.
(As to those who say software should be free,
I notice that the magazines and books promoting the meme
that software should be free are not themselves free,
although they could be distributed free over the web,
and the act of writing software is little different from
the act of writing text. Hey, I know, we should
establish a centralized government to pay the
authors of open-source software, and musicians,
and writers, and, heck, everyone! From each
according to their abilities... wait a minute, I
think we tried that already.)
Deciding how much to pay each author would be
difficult, and the only workable systems would be
unjust. However, an unjust system is better than
no system at all, I think. An example of an unjust
but workable system would be for each line of code
or range of code to have an author's name attached to it
in a comment; for the company to choose those lines
of code they wish to use; for them to use grep to
sort all the lines of code in the project into separate
files by author; and then to gzip the file for each
author, and split the payment among authors in
proportion to the compressed filesize of their
contributions.
The company might be able to choose between
paying a flat fee, or a per-license fee. Remember that
some of these "companies" might be a guy in an apartment
trying something out with no money, who would need
to operate on a per-license fee. Since flat fees in
general favor large companies, I would stick with the
license fee if people feel we need to pick one.
Remembering that these AI applications could be
web services, we would also need a per-use fee,
so that a user can't buy one "license" for his servelet
and let the whole world use it.
We should also not require people to relinquish patent
rights on any concepts they use in the open-source code.
They need only allow that patent to be used in that code,
with no restrictions on its use in that code or in further
versions of that code.
An assumption of mine that can be debated perhaps in a
separate message thread, is that there should be
effectively only one AGI, allowing for a federation of
AGI's contrived to prevent war between them.
The balance-of-power issue is a good point to make;
I made some similar remarks at the AGIRI conference.
Governance of a open source distributed AGI, with
users who could be citizens of enemy countries, is an
issue that might be addressed by license terms and
conditions - any thoughts?
Citizens of such countries probably aren't going to pay
attention to any license terms you make, anyway.
(Not to mention some "friendly" countries I could name.)
- Phil
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