Open source vs closed source is one of the most difficult decisions I faced in my entire AGI career.
I've always championed "open source AND for-profit", which is the middleground of "open-free" and "closed-commercial", though it may seem like a contradiction. Sometimes I think it may work in a paradoxical way. Some other times, I have a feeling that such a middleground is not the best. One surprising thing I learned is how many AGI people actually insist on the product being free and opensource. Perhaps it is the "backlash" created by Bill Gates' extraordinary success and wealth, at the expense of his competitors and other startups. * * * The second question is whether the "AGI core" can be built by a "closed" team of say 10-20 people. I think the answer is yes and no. It depends on what kind of "people" we're talking about. AGI requires solving some *open research problems* such as probabilistic logic. Normally any one of such problems requires at least several years of a devoted and brilliant researcher to solve. Notice that this situation is distinctly different from many other traditional startups where basically no major technological breakthrough / research is required (most notably Microsoft). So it seems that we need to INCREASE the level of ideas-sharing and collaboration among researchers. And opensource *may* be able to help achieve that. But then again, notice that most traditional opensource projects are very technologically conservative -- they're not known for bring about breakthroughs. We have tough problems ahead, to say the least. YKY ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
