On 6/2/07, Bob Mottram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From having worked on open source projects previously I think you could be entering a world of pain here, because who assesses individual contributions and upon what basis do you divide up the cash. You'll have developers wasting a lot of time arguing about why their particular contribution was bigger or more important than the next guys.
If members submit many contributions, slight inaccuracies will be evened out, and there's no point making a big fuss about small ones. If a big dispute occurs we can set up an expert committee and use voting.
In the world of industry I've seen situations where particular technologies were developed and then ring-fenced by astronomically expensive licences such that only a tiny number of large corporations had access to it. It seems to me that this sort of situation could also easily apply to AI development. As a recent example of this kind of behavior I'd cite certain robotics APIs, and also some of the APIs used for advanced camera based surveillance systems. [...] Well I wouldn't have anything to do with software patents, because ultimately they punish small software developers like myself. I don't have either the time or inclination to be a legal expert and research every algorithm before implementing it.
Business has become very high stake nowadays, you must accept that or be left out of the game. This consortium is actually trying to help individuals and small developers by giving them leverage.
Some small fee for an API would be fine, but requiring developers to be anti-competitive seems very unrealistic.
Ok, anti-competition will be replaced by "agreeing to pay the mother project when using its ideas on external projects". 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=e9e40a7e