Hi Stephen, As a small operation independent of Cyc, distributing your AGI system as open source is likely to be a good strategy.
As a small university PI developing visualization software, distributing my systems as open source turned out to be very good for my project. Our collaborators and customers came to us out of the blue, without any need for a marketing department we couldn't afford. There were very few negatives (we did have a developer in China who wanted me to pay them to get access to some enhanccements they had made, but I simply declined). In my first major system, Vis5D, there was a problem with divergent versions. We were able to work with developers to unify the most important versions, but it was hard work and there were still numerous divergent versions. For another major system, VisAD, I specifically designed it a high level of abstraction and with classes designed to be extended to allow developers to make low level changes, and so far there have not been divergent versions. I am a bit skeptical whether legal wording in the license will restrain developers from making divergent versions - as a small operation, are you really prepared to take violators to court? But if your design makes divergence less necesary, most developers will see the advantage of a unified version that permits sharing. By open source distribution you are expressing optimism about human nature, and your developer community will mostly justify that optimism. The best approach for the few who disappoint you is to simply ignore them. Good luck, Bill On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Stephen Reed wrote: > I would appreciate comments regarding additional > constraints, if any, that should be applied to a > traditional open source license to achieve a free but > safe widespread distribution of software that may lead > to AGI. > > As background, I was recently layed off by Cycorp, the > creators of the Cyc knowledge base, and I am taking > this opportunity to pursue my own AGI ideas full time. > Although I am a ResearchCyc licensee I am considering > a roadmap leading to a completely open source AGI. > > 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? > > The leading GNU Public License forbids any further > constraints beyond its own terms so lets think about > the Apache Software License (ASL). > > http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html > > Here is a key clause: > > "Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, > each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, > worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, > irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare > Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly > perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such > Derivative Works in Source or Object form." > > 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. > > A second assumption is that the existing legal > structure, in particular license enforcement > throughout the world, can handle an open source AGI. > > What about an AGI open source license, similar to the > above ASL in which the user must, to comply with the > license, federate their downloaded AGI with the > existing AGI system and thus subordinate it to ethic, > legal and safety controls previously established? > > 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? > > Cheers. > -Steve > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your > subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
