Well, your suggestion is basically a dictatorship by you ;-) ... where
individuals contribute their code to a for-profit you control, without any
clear promise of compensation in future, or even of ability to see the whole
system into which their code is fitting...
I don't see how your system is better than just making a standard for-profit
company, and allocating individuals options periodically based on their
contributions. What's the difference, and what's the advantage?
Ben
On 6/3/07, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Ben,
Great suggestion but, fundamentally, I don't want the codebase to be
open-source.
>> I understand this is not a perfect arrangement, but it seems to me much
less profoundly flawed than the other alternatives that have been bounced
around...
Could you point out what you see as the profound flaws in my
suggestion? (And TIA if you're willing to do so)
Mark
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Benjamin Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*To:* agi@v2.listbox.com
*Sent:* Sunday, June 03, 2007 1:57 PM
*Subject:* Re: [agi] Open AGI Consortium
YKY and Mark Waser ...
About "innovative organizational structures for AGI projects", let me
suggest the following....
Perhaps you could
A)
make the AGI codebase itself open-source, but using a license other than
GPL, which
-- makes the source open
-- makes the source free for noncommercial use
-- gives the rights to control commercialization of the codebase to the
nonprofit XYZ Corporation [including derived works of the codebase]
B)
The nonprofit XYZ Corporation would
-- have the goal of giving rights to others to use the AGI code
commercially
-- have the policy of preferentially giving these rights to those who have
contributed to the codebase
-- not give long-term domain-specific exclusive rights to anyone
(short-term domain-specific exclusive rights, might make sense..)
-- charge some license fee for those who want to commercialize the
codebase,
which would fund its operations and also potentially fund work on the AGI
codebase
That way, if you yourself want to both work on the AGI codebase and make
$$, you could
-- work on the AGI codebase
-- found a for-profit startup applying early versions of the AGI codebase
in some particular vertical market
Some advantages of this arrangement are:
-- If folks just want to contribute to an AGI without worrying about
making $$, but with a desire for their code to be publicly available, this
satisfies them
-- If contributors to the AGI codebase want to make $$, they can start a
spinoff and get permission from XYZ to use the AGI code
-- the AGI itself will not stand or fall based on the success or failure
of any particular commercial application
-- if ownership is diluted by VC or angel investment, the dilution will
occur in a for-profit spinoff, not in XYC
-- if a really awesome advanced AGI is produced, XYZ always has the
opportunity to make $$ from it and keep the money in-house to promote a
positive Singularity. It can't disseminate this $$ to the co-founders ...
but it can certainly pay the co-founders healthy salaries and bonuses for
their work...
I don't intend to follow this sort of arrangement with Novamente. We have
accepted the plusses and minuses of being a small for-profit startup firm.
However, if you want to do an OSS AGI project but still preserve
possibilities for commercialization, I think the above makes sense.
A key point is that, until the AGI is really close to adult-human-level,
the commercial payoff is gonna be in domain-specific vertical-market
spinoffs, not in the AGI per se. And for each of these spinoffs, at least
80% of the work will be non AI related. And each of these spinoffs will
likely require investment $$ to pay non AI staff, which will dilute founder
ownership ... but at least (in the plan I've
suggested above) not in the AGI.
Alternatively, XYZ could be a for-profit as well. But my feeling is that
this would be worse psychologically, and more opposed to the OSS spirit.
With XYZ as a nonprofit, contributors to the OSS AGI codebase don't have the
feeling that they're coding for free, but for someone else's benefit. The
benefit goes to anyone who wants to do a spinoff of the AGI codebase, and
then some of the profit from this spinoff (if any) goes back to get more AGI
work done.
I understand this is not a perfect arrangement, but it seems to me much
less profoundly flawed than the other alternatives that have been bounced
around...
Just trying to be helpful...
-- Ben G
On 6/3/07, YKY (Yan King Yin) < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 6/3/07, Bob Mottram < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > One way in which you might be able to make use of many members who may
> > be interested in AGI but lack the background knowledge or programming
> > skills might be to develop scripting languages or IDEs which would
> > allow volunteers (payed or otherwise) to generate training scenarios
> > or evaluate test runs. Those who are good coders but without much AI
> > knowhow could be put to work developing simulation environments, or
> > just generally improving the quality of animations or other stuff
> > which will add to the presentation.
>
> I think there's a broad spectrum of talent out there that cannot be
> characterized easily, and they may be able to work on all aspects of AGI.
> For example, I can think of a "toy-level" AGI consisting of an NL interface
> dumping things into a KB and perhaps performing some reasoning as well. It
> may start as a seed to be improved upon, by tinkering and guided by theory.
> That's the type of collaboration I'm thinking of -- an environment that is
> like opensource, but with a more substantial chance of getting paid.
>
> Also, some others may want to try entirely different ideas, but similar
> in the "emergent" sense.
>
> YKY
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