I'm guessing the motive is to make money. You only lose rights to your algorithm if you win money... so that would be your compensation. How they'll make money is their business. If they sell it to LL, then it may become part of an OpenSource project, in which case I'm just guessing that they want absolute rights in order to distribute it for free.
Gold might not be so bad, what would bother me if I was in your shoes would be losing rights for the second prize purse. :-\ You have my sympathy for the intellectual property angst involved. good luck, Vector -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]on Behalf Of Callum Lerwick Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 4:16 PM To: sldev Subject: [sldev] Linden Lab OpenJPEG contest on TopCoder Is this for real? http://forums.topcoder.com/?module=Thread&threadID=634679&start=0&mc=1#10710 16 http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=13772 http://forums.topcoder.com/?module=ThreadList&forumID=526417&mc=121 My googling and searching of mailing lists and LL blogs reveals no mention of TopCoder at all, that I can find. Is LL really behind this? Only other thing I can find is this: http://studio.topcoder.com/?module=ViewContestDetails&ct=1000525 I only found out about it because I have someone emailing me for tips. This treads directly on my territory and I'm going to be very annoyed if people are winning thousands of dollars for something I've been pouring hundreds of man hours into over the past two years without any such direct compensation. Also the rules are very concerning: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchRules&rd=13772 "If TopCoder compensates you for your submission, then you agree to irrevocably and unconditionally transfer and assign to TopCoder all right, title and interest you have, may have or acquire in, such submission" "You further agree that any and all works of authorship created, authored or developed by you hereunder which TopCoder compensates you for shall be deemed to be "works made for hire" within the meaning of the United States Copyright Law and, as such, all rights therein including copyright shall belong solely and exclusively to TopCoder from the time of their creation." Or in short "You sign over your soul to TopCoder" which makes me hesitant to participate, and makes me question the motives of those behind the contest. This is very much the opposite of open collaboration. So, seriously WTF? Does this all sound fair to you? Because I'm sure feeling cheated. Incidentally I recently posted some patches that give a 30-35% speedup of the decoder: http://groups.google.com/group/openjpeg/browse_thread/thread/4d27b0eaeba39c8 a _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
