At 09:56 AM 5/15/99 +0200, Henrik Olsen wrote:
>> Just out of interest, can I have someone demand I give them a share of the
>> money / stop being in GIMPS if they really wanted to (not that I should
>> think they would...)
>
>One thing most people seems to have forgotten when it comes to talk about
>the money, is that according to the common scientific discovery rules
>George Woltman and Scott Kurowski will be co-discoverers of all primes
>found using mprime/prime95, and the client/server setup, so should
>rightfully get a big part of the money.
>From a legal stand point I think George & Scott may have "signed" away most
of their rights to the money (not the discovery rights though) by
advertising on their web page that participating in GIMPS could win you
$50,000. It certainly seems to imply that from my read anyway...
Of course on the strictly ethical side of things I think George & Scott
deserve something for their troubles. Personally I feel that I would give
a portion of the money back to GIMPS but then again that is easy to say
when dealing with purely theoretical money ;-) I would think that > 95% of
the people here are involved with GIMPS for non monetary reasons, I would
go so far as to say noble reasons, (especially the founders of GIMPS who
have put in so much time and effort over the years). Sadly even the most
noble of pursuits are often spoiled by squabbling over the "brass ring".
Shane Sanford
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