Author Topic: 1000 PTS - Write Social Consensus Software License (SCSL) [CLOSED]  (Read 44471 times)

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Offline barwizi

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And you expect investors to be happy about this? do try explaining all this to someone who bought 5k PTS and bought 1k PTS worth of AGS. Most of what you speak of is ideological with no Business vector, we do not feed on ideas alone. This is a capitalist world and we intend to capitalize on our ideas.

Just who do you think is paying for the development kit you intend to use on said DAC you are ruminating on? As one of the guys helping out in that area i totally reject your ideas, we wanna get rich that's why wer are here, not some noble cause. I create a dev kit and am paid 10k PTS, who do you think paid the 10k? You expect that person to just giveaway that tool without trying to guarantee personal benefits from it?

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« Last Edit: January 11, 2014, 09:28:48 pm by barwizi »
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Offline earthbound

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I'm puzzled by the apparent implicit expectation that if something is not protected by copyfarleft than it can pave a way for patent trolls etc. A Public Domain Dedication of something which could potentially be patented, but which is not; this would preclude patent trolls from patenting any such thing as the Public Domain Dedication claims and proves as its original invention, and which is already so freely and widely either used or planned for use that nobody could reasonably claim exclusive right to it. There is substantial precident that shows this. The many attempted patents which you describe by e.g. Apple and J.P. morgan are laughed out of the U.S. patent office, because the patent office (surprisingly and wisely!) sees that they are shadows of ideas that nobody can patent because they are already in wide and free use. It's like trying to trademark a number (the way Intel tried to trademark the number 8088, and were laughted at for it). J.P. Morgan's pretentious digital currency patents have been rejected by the Patent office more than a hundred times. So also will Apple's (even if they apply a hundred times). Or, if not, the public has a hella case to bring against Apple, and Apple will not ultimately win, provided the public is willing and able to fight.

About value being made "out of thin air," of course I do not literally mean that the value is made out of thin air. What I do mean is that its a model which can create value with surprising ease--after the train gets going. Of course it takes a terrible lot of sweat, coal and steam to get the train going.

Also, I'm hearing two things at odds:

1) We must protect our investment from abuses e.g. patent trolls or large enterprises who would simply step in and poach our efforts, running off with so much value while giving nothing back.

2) Giving ten percent to the folks who back an enterprise from the get-go is "pittance," so nobody has any reason to do the wrong thing (to not give that ten percent).

Well, if nobody has any reason not to do the right thing, why should we contractually oblige them to?

I believe I am arguing for benevolent anarchism--yes, there are no rules other than that you hope others will do the right thing, because they obviously have no compelling reasons not to. It is an implied contract: I trust you not to mess with me, and I will freely exchange ideas and efforts with you for so long as it seems to me apparent that you will hold by this obligation which is so obvious that yes, of course I formally ask you to do what's right . . . but how do we always know what's right or best? What is right or best can change with circumstances; even drastically.

And what about drastic, unexpected changes? What necesittates benevolent anarchism is precisely the uncertainty which is underscored by the contradictions in your comments. One minute, your comments center on concern about people doing the wrong thing, and the next minute, you emphasize that they clearly have no reason to do the wrong thing--they only have reasons to do the right thing.

Well, which is it?

I think we don't know (and hence we vascillate on the question) because we don't yet know whether the Social Contract we propose to form is even the ideal contract. This technology and social engineering (and it really is social engineering) is so new and so novel that nobody could possibly predict what will come of it. It therefore needs to have a social setting which is so very flexible as to allow people to alter the rules for whatever benevolent purposes they may deem necessary (and which they may be able to persuade others are necessary). I challenge even your assertion that we know what will necessarily protect and best promote our investment, and that approach X will work while approach Y will not.

Now, maybe I've run into a self-contradiction here; in that I don't know whether benevolent anarchism will work; or whether there's any guarantee that it will work: can I really say it will work and a Social Contract won't?

No, I can't--but the difference is that benevolent anarchism admits this and, I'm concerned, a Social Contract . . . might try to hedge about that; to say "we are sure this set of rules will work."

No, we are not sure this will work.

But we do hope it will.

I do not like a proposed contract because I believe that in an absolutely free/frictionless commerce, if the majority happens to generally foster good will and make prudent decisions by the merits of their own instincts and conscience, the good majority will win, no matter what anyone with ill-will (or simply foolish will) may try to impose on them. Again, that's assuming or hoping that the majority generally favors what happens to be objectively good for everyone. If the majority picks otherwise, if the majority happens to be foolish or ill-willed, we're toast, and yes, that's chaotic/unruly anarchism. But if the majority makes poor choices, then there is not any system that can make it otherwise, period.

This is way too young and way too wild to say with any certainty what contracts will best predict a bright future and which contracts will not. I therefore propose the contract of maximal risk, because I want the potential maximal rewards of risking that others will do right by the community (really the world), which I hope and believe they will.

But I won't pretend that I could protect myself from people disappointing me, whatever set of rules I would impose in whatever circumstance--circmustances that can change so wildly that I may have a hard time recollecting next year why I wanted a certain set of now-discarded rules.

Consider this scenario (and this is one I've actually been ruminating on, and I would love to make this DAC); suppose somebody invents a DAC: "ID Squatter DAC," which somehow manages to be able to both generate and hide private keys from everyone, including itself, until some certain condition is met. And suppose that the private keys it hides happen to be for Keyhotee IDs which it automatically mined using GPUs, so that it mines ten thousand highly desirable IDs in a week, and then squats on those IDs, only dispensing the private keys for them, securely, to the highest bidders, such that the DAC itself can guarantee that it does not know the private keys and that only the highest bidder can know the keys (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, famous Hollywood director X, famous politician Y). Moreover, ID Squatter DAC also does all this from its own blockchain which is independent of Protoshares, let's call it HorkedIDShares, and this independent blockchains shares operates similarly to the BitShares/BitBTC exchange; HorkedIDShares can be used as collateral investment in a seperate exchange blockchain, ProtoSquatter, which somehow finds a way to deprecate the value of ProtoShares unless people pay seriously high "registration" fees to ID Squatter DAC. Now we've got a market that completely disrupts the foundational assumption that nobody would want to bid on Keyhotee IDs, in the same way that (supposedly) nobody wants to bid on an email addresses. (We've also got a DAC that it would be very tempting to sell for a few billion dollars when evil parties realize how much power they could abuse with this DAC.) We have something monetized which we never imagined could or should be monetized.

Are we sure about our assumption that unique and desirable Keyhotee IDs could have no further value than the face value we assign to them based on our assumptions about how they will be used or function? Are we sure they can't be used in some very unexpected ways that might make them more highly valuable--and therefore purchaseable--than we might have thought?

Now, what do we do with the promise that we'd give Keyhotee Founders precedence in profits--when some weird bloke with his insance DAC came along and smashed our expectations to smithereens, by suddenly making a "killing" on something--free Keyhotee IDs--which he found a way to seriously exploit in ways we couldn't have guessed?

What do we do with our entire technological and investment infrastructure if market innovations prove to turn our foundational assumptions on their head?

What we do is found the whole enterprise on an implied contract which can be as drastically flexible as drastic unpredicatability may warrant: A Public Domain Dedication, or benevolent anarchy.

(And let the Founders figure out how to increase the value of their Founder ID proceeds which have been seriously devalued by ID Squatter DAC.)
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Offline luckybit

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Individuals might be able to violate it if they are willing to ignore the law, but businesses cannot.

Considering the money and support behind PTS most individuals that have at least a basic understanding of the crypto-world will jump at the chance of having a ready user/customer base.

Even a copy-paste idiot will see the immeasurable advantage, we can now deploy pools, explorers and we are working on new tech that is based of the PTS code. Why take an unnecessary risk of going it alone, when they have all that at their disposal for free?

It's a lot like having home court advantage in basketball. When you go against the home team on their court you can expect to be booed and shunned.

Ideally we want to make a DAC development kit which makes it so easy to do it the right way that no one has the incentive to do it the hard way.

A good model is take a look at the video game industry in the golden era where you had Nintendo, Sega, Sony. They all made their development kits as easy as possible, but they charged a licensing fee to launch titles on their platforms.

Game developers had to compete to create and launch the best games but if they wanted to use the development kits and launch it on the Nintendo, Sony or Sega platforms they had to pay the license fee.  If not for the license fees Nintendo and Sega for example would never have had the money to build the most cutting edge Video Game systems. They built the cutting edge platforms and provided the development kit to allow anyone to launch games on their platform but it isn't free to build the cutting edge Video Game systems and most of these systems were launched at a loss forcing them to make the money back in licensing fees.

The Video Game industry model is not perfect, but the one area where they get it right is in the standardized development kit. You need to make a standardized development kit for DACs so that developers can launch DACs on your platform with ease. The cost of them using that development kit is that they must honor the social consensus software license which is 10%.

Honestly 10% isn't all that bad if we think of DACs like we think of Video Game titles.
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Personal computer platforms (such as Linux, OS X, and Windows) are traditionally financially more accessible to independent game developers than video game consoles. Aside from basic development costs, console game developers are required to pay fees to license the required Software Development Kits (SDKs) from the console maker. Manufacturers often impose a strict approval process and take a percentage of the game's net profit in addition to yearly developer fees. To develop for Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, or PlayStation 3 requires an SDK license fee of between US$2,000 and $10,000, in addition to yearly developer fees and profit cuts, although development for Xbox Live Indie Games only requires a $99/year Creators Club membership and Microsoft takes 30% of sales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_industry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_video_game_development
« Last Edit: January 11, 2014, 01:52:12 pm by luckybit »
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Offline barwizi

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Individuals might be able to violate it if they are willing to ignore the law, but businesses cannot.

Considering the money and support behind PTS most individuals that have at least a basic understanding of the crypto-world will jump at the chance of having a ready user/customer base.

Even a copy-paste idiot will see the immeasurable advantage, we can now deploy pools, explorers and we are working on new tech that is based of the PTS code. Why take an unnecessary risk of going it alone, when they have all that at their disposal for free?
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Offline luckybit

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Okay! Lookie here! I penned an epic! :)

These are my thoughts regarding item 3) Preventing businesses that believe in intellectual property from using any DAC that doesn't honor the SCSL:



My opinion is that every entity which seeks to become part of something has an obligation and responsibility to be a good citizen of whatever they are becoming part of. The rules have already been agreed upon and established. Latecomers should abide by the rules set forth before they arrived and the social consensus / contract represents what the community believes to be the minimum level of fairness. The social consensus license gives the social contract some teeth so that the will of the community must be respected by entities coming from other communities.

Just as we are expected to follow whatever money transmitter laws and other rules they put up to protect their community they should be expected to follow the rules we set up to protect our community. I don't see why we should give them a pass when we don't get a pass when we try to open a bank account or set up a business to turn fiat into Bitshares.

At some point--possibly sooner than you think, if it is not so already--the Really Big Boys will not only want a piece of the "pie," they will catch on to the fact they too can create incredibly good pies (as it were) out of thin air.
Bitshares, Protoshares, Bitcoin, none of this was created out of thin air. You think the code wrote itself? You think all the philosophy behind it came out of thin air? The psychological insights? The marketing? What about the people willing to take risks, uncertain as to whether or not they'll end up in jail over it?

It did not come out of thin air. Value never comes out of thin air. If people did not have faith in the Bitcoin protocol and if people did not believe in the code then it would have no value and the Big Boys wouldn't have picked up on it.

What you can probably count on, however, is that they will fail to appreciate how exactly your social contract and model empowers your, uh, pies. They will therefore expend great efforts in forming what you might only regard as half-baked pies; and worse, if you adopt a model which is at odds with their silly proprietary crutches, they might either be too frightened to proceed more aggressively with their ideas--as the market hopes they will--let's bring everything out at full speed and see what survives and what doesn't!--or they might fumble with the difficulties and inevitable misunderstandings and/or perceived vagaries of your model.
They might try to make a patented version of Bitcoin. Apple is already attempting something like that, as is JP Morgan, IBM and others. They have patents right now which seem to be for types of software which are a remarkably similar to Bitcoin.

What we don't want is for DACs to end up patented by some big company that had nothing to do with creating the first DAC. In fact if you go with copy left then it cannot be patented at all.

Whatever their possible weaknesses (and who knows but what they may be right with some of their silly ideas that you might regard as crutches), I propose that we absolutely want to welcome the Really Big Boys with arms as wide open as they can possibly stretch.
Why? Are the Big Boys welcoming these ideas with open arms? They aren't removing their regulations on crowd funding and their 1 million dollar limitation. The social consensus license is perhaps one of the best legal shields to protect the community if used appropriately. There is no reason that I can see why the social consensus license should be watered down or opened up to let the Big Banks in unless they are willing to play by the rules the community sets for them in advance. Just as the Big Boys are worried about money laundering, drugs, and they demand that we follow their rules to interact with the banking community I don't see why our community cannot have rules of its own which we demand they play by in order to use technology developed by our community using our decentralized processes.

If they want to benefit from decentralized technology they should promote decentralization. The social consensus license is just one possible license to promote decentralization.
I personally strongly dislike any license which places any constraints whatever on anyone. (That means both copyright and copyleft, and anything and everything so obligatory-copy-or-not-copy-whatever.) I mockingly penned a variant of the Public Domain Dedication in rebellion against such.
The purpose of a software license is to interface with the wider community which is built up on rules, laws, courts and so on. If you have no language to interact with their system then you'll be completely exploited by it. If your license is completely permissive and lets anyone do anything then you wont have a community for very long and it wont be very sustainable because there won't be any ability to set rules.

If you believe there should be no rules it does not change the fact that you cannot promote decentralization without rules. These rules could be like the axioms in the Bitshares white paper or in the form of a social consensus license but having it written down can show that you have a clear set of intentions.

It is my opinion that all (most?) copyright and license etc. organizational/rights models have produced various things of value. I can point to one brilliant piece of software and say: Open Source created that, and I can point to another brilliant piece of software and say: Proprietary technology/intellectual property/copyright methods made that.
This is a philosophical argument but I'll say that if you're trying to create decentralized, open, community owned software then software patents and copyright make it very hard to do that because it stifles innovation. Proprietary technology if it is closed source cannot be trusted.
I therefore personally would not wish to curtail any process of innovation which anyone chooses to undertake, nor the necessarily associated intellectual property ideologies (or lack thereof) from which they would pursue their undertaking.
I agree with this in theory. In practice it's just not possible to do it like that and protect yourself from predatory Big Boys who wont respect your community or any of it's principles. So how do you build a community without making the intentions known to everyone, whether they believe in the law or not? You can make it closed source but then you're breaking your own principle of being open, so the way to maintain the principle of being open while also making your intentions the law, requires that you create a software license where it is made clear. Since the community already agrees on the 10% going to Protoshares, the social consensus license would put that intention into a legally recognized document which the Big Boys would have to respect.


This includes knowingly and voluntarily risking that anyone could therefore undertake what I consider to be abuses of bodies of work which I have created, hoping that somewhere in the mix of those abuses there is also a mix of benefits to society.
Why rely on hope? This is a philosophical argument, but I see no reason why all aspects of free speech should not be used to promote the social contract/consensus. That means legal tools like the social consensus software license, that could mean legally forming your businesses in such a way that respect for the social consensus is baked in. Why even give them the option to violate the social consensus when you can use all your resources to make it where there is a strong deterrent against violating the social consensus?

You don't have to rely on hope. If someone violates the social consensus then they are violating the software license and for that reason no business will be able to violate it. Individuals might be able to violate it if they are willing to ignore the law, but businesses cannot.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2014, 01:28:34 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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wow much comment!!! very word!! lol

It's great to see that people are showing more interest in this document. I'd like to start by asking, do you understand what AGS is, not only the name but what it represents? A lot of people have made some donations and taken some risks to form a collective that shall be the Genesis of Decentralized Autonomous Companies. Just like Bitcoin changed how people think of money in a way, DACs are a revolutionary idea for how to conduct eCommerce.

I hope you are not offended but your speech has deep roots in anarchism, which frankly does not work for any business model. Note, i say BUSINESS. This community is not actively seeking to circumvent traditional systems, we have a vision, that of decentralized enterprises that function completely virtually and benefit us. We intend to at some point interact with businesses that operate in the physical world and as a result wee must take that into account. The idea of decentralization and anonymity may have relevance to anarchism, but that is another conversation.

Digital currency is not illegal, it is just unregulated tender. In the event that it's acceptance becomes wider, as you say the Big Boys will want in. We are not blocking them, we are saying, let them bring their ideas, money and join the collective so that we all benefit. Should such an entity exist and wish to use our ideas and software, which as you said come from nothing, they should not have a problem giving us 10% of nothing.

DACs are not a snub at other organizations, They are business and as such the property should be treated thus. I have invested a certain amount and so have many others, and we would like to protect our investment, not by completely making our product inaccessible, but by making it accessible to those who wish to create value with us. That is what copyfarleft is about. It benefits the community, and not on an obscene scale.

Another things is, should one of the "Big boys" want in, they can easily go make their own, even as far as making it from scratch, they benefit nothing except possible litigation by coming here. You seem very interested in the workings of large companies, i work for one, and i can tell you that if they become interested in PTS 50 million is an amount they would easily shell out to buy all the shares out there. Hell, they would just post a standing offer that would entice all holders to sell without a noticeable dent in their account.

My point is, we want to protect the investments of time money and labour, an just as it states in the license, if you wanna use the software 10% is a pittance if your business model is good. And along with that 10% comes a large amount of free marketing, experienced programmers to consult, infrastructure and the added caveat that the PTS you hold will entitle you to a % of other DACs.

The only person loosing out here is copy-paste profiteers and those who would take the ideas out of the community without paying royalties. So no, i do not believe your idea is applicable on investors funds and ideas.

+1

I agree and think we should use our free speech capability to it's fullest extent to protect the the integrity of the DAC community. Do we want some large corporation who has no dealings with the community to come along and patent important technology and then sue people later on? Do we want to promote an economically self sustaining community? To do that we require that a copy left license exist for the same reason that the GPL has shown itself to be necessary.

If big business has big money to contribute to our community then the license does not prevent them from contributing. If they want to take the code, remix and improve upon it then they can just so long as they respect the social contract/consensus. That respect to the social contract/consensus will produce a self sustaining community which in my opinion is important if you want to have sustainable decentralization.

Big businesses are often centralized businesses. If they enter the community and are allowed to completely change the social contract to their benefit then eventually the same centralization from big business will appear in this community. A license can discourage that centralization on the social and business levels by baking into the license itself some speech which could legally guarantee that the DAC community and whatever it grows into in the future remains a free and open frontier.

« Last Edit: January 11, 2014, 01:18:09 pm by luckybit »
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Offline barwizi

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wow much comment!!! very word!! lol

It's great to see that people are showing more interest in this document. I'd like to start by asking, do you understand what AGS is, not only the name but what it represents? A lot of people have made some donations and taken some risks to form a collective that shall be the Genesis of Decentralized Autonomous Companies. Just like Bitcoin changed how people think of money in a way, DACs are a revolutionary idea for how to conduct eCommerce.

I hope you are not offended but your speech has deep roots in anarchism, which frankly does not work for any business model. Note, i say BUSINESS. This community is not actively seeking to circumvent traditional systems, we have a vision, that of decentralized enterprises that function completely virtually and benefit us. We intend to at some point interact with businesses that operate in the physical world and as a result wee must take that into account. The idea of decentralization and anonymity may have relevance to anarchism, but that is another conversation.

Digital currency is not illegal, it is just unregulated tender. In the event that it's acceptance becomes wider, as you say the Big Boys will want in. We are not blocking them, we are saying, let them bring their ideas, money and join the collective so that we all benefit. Should such an entity exist and wish to use our ideas and software, which as you said come from nothing, they should not have a problem giving us 10% of nothing.

DACs are not a snub at other organizations, They are business and as such the property should be treated thus. I have invested a certain amount and so have many others, and we would like to protect our investment, not by completely making our product inaccessible, but by making it accessible to those who wish to create value with us. That is what copyfarleft is about. It benefits the community, and not on an obscene scale.

Another things is, should one of the "Big boys" want in, they can easily go make their own, even as far as making it from scratch, they benefit nothing except possible litigation by coming here. You seem very interested in the workings of large companies, i work for one, and i can tell you that if they become interested in PTS 50 million is an amount they would easily shell out to buy all the shares out there. Hell, they would just post a standing offer that would entice all holders to sell without a noticeable dent in their account.

My point is, we want to protect the investments of time money and labour, an just as it states in the license, if you wanna use the software 10% is a pittance if your business model is good. And along with that 10% comes a large amount of free marketing, experienced programmers to consult, infrastructure and the added caveat that the PTS you hold will entitle you to a % of other DACs.

The only person loosing out here is copy-paste profiteers and those who would take the ideas out of the community without paying royalties. So no, i do not believe your idea is applicable on investors funds and ideas.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2014, 06:35:49 am by barwizi »
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Offline earthbound

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ALSO: If all or most other rights are given for the risk/benefit of the world, yet I think that trademark rights should be well wielded and defended. I think the dual open-source/well-defended trademark approach of the Mozilla Foundation is an excellent example of this.
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Offline earthbound

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Okay! Lookie here! I penned an epic! :)

These are my thoughts regarding item 3) Preventing businesses that believe in intellectual property from using any DAC that doesn't honor the SCSL:

Why?

Observations to consider, and factors to balance:

At some point--possibly sooner than you think, if it is not so already--the Really Big Boys will not only want a piece of the "pie," they will catch on to the fact they too can create incredibly good pies (as it were) out of thin air. What you can probably count on, however, is that they will fail to appreciate how exactly your social contract and model empowers your, uh, pies. They will therefore expend great efforts in forming what you might only regard as half-baked pies; and worse, if you adopt a model which is at odds with their silly proprietary crutches, they might either be too frightened to proceed more aggressively with their ideas--as the market hopes they will--let's bring everything out at full speed and see what survives and what doesn't!--or they might fumble with the difficulties and inevitable misunderstandings and/or perceived vagaries of your model.

Whatever their possible weaknesses (and who knows but what they may be right with some of their silly ideas that you might regard as crutches), I propose that we absolutely want to welcome the Really Big Boys with arms as wide open as they can possibly stretch.

How wide?

A Public Domain Dedication-wide. My explanation of how I believe this will best advance your cause, will segue from the following philosophical tract which I beg you to indulge.

I personally strongly dislike any license which places any constraints whatever on anyone. (That means both copyright and copyleft, and anything and everything so obligatory-copy-or-not-copy-whatever.) I mockingly penned a variant of the Public Domain Dedication in rebellion against such.

http://www.earthbound.io/legal/absa-freaking-lutely-anything-license1.0.txt

It is my opinion that all (most?) copyright and license etc. organizational/rights models have produced various things of value. I can point to one brilliant piece of software and say: Open Source created that, and I can point to another brilliant piece of software and say: Proprietary technology/intellectual property/copyright methods made that. (Or, if it isn't necessarily brilliant, the fact that they got so many people to use it despite the fact is brilliant . . . if perhaps sickening . . .)

I therefore personally would not wish to curtail any process of innovation which anyone chooses to undertake, nor the necessarily associated intellectual property ideologies (or lack thereof) from which they would pursue their undertaking. This includes knowingly and voluntarily risking that anyone could therefore undertake what I consider to be abuses of bodies of work which I have created, hoping that somewhere in the mix of those abuses there is also a mix of benefits to society. (Actually, that is an arguable case for current copyright/trademark/patent laws. Possibly with the exception of software patents, and some copyright whores of corporations (I really can't use any other word there.)

Probably the only exception I would make is that I would absolutely want to forestall intellectual property/copyright etc. trolls from abusing the public with claims that my work violates their intellectual rights/copyrights, so that under the duress and intimidation ("chilling effect") of such claims, those whom they oppose are squelched out of existence. An example of this horror is in software patents surrounding video codecs. The minefield of video codec intellectual property laws and litigations is in my opinion a despicable pandora (yes--let's mix these metaphors--a pandora of minefields), which has inhibited so much innovation and, ultimately I would argue, has also undermined the whole market and area of video codecs, and associated video copying/distribution means, etc. The last I researched it, intellectual property questions about video codecs place a stranglehold on those who wish to simply create absolutely Public Domain/royalty/intellectual-property-entanglement-free video codecs. Troll after troll lays in wait to pounce on any new video codec which they claim abuses their rights in some algorithm or idea.

A Public Domain Dedication could prevent that by making (for example) the following clear: 1) what exactly you've contributed that is original and marketable--arguably even disruptive-- 2) that you irrevocably decree that anyone can exploit those ideas without any limitation and for any purpose whatever.

This naturally and inherently squelches all questions of copyright trolling, because it makes it clear that you did this first, and you also said that anybody else can do this without limitation, so that anyone who comes along and claims otherwise (in other words, any troll X who claims others can't use the ideas for profit, because troll X supposedly has sole rights to those ideas) -- anyone who claims otherwise is dismissed with prejudice, owing to the very public, well-known origin of those actual rights, and that moreover, those rights were and are irrevocably dedicated to everyone.

Yes indeed, those irrevocably dedicated rights include the right to go all, uh, closed-source on the public, if anyone wishes to. So, no, this would not prevent others from e.g. creating closed-source or otherwise proprietary clones of your ideas. But for the reasons I gave after I linked to my text, it is my strong preference to risk that.

Consider what is even now unfolding in these forums, surrounding GPU proof-of-work momentum (PTS/MMC or whatever else) miners. What model are so many choosing (or at least initially they have), right here in an arena where you would think there is hearty support of an open-source model? They're all trying to bait people into mining with miners which they (pointedly!) refuse to open-source, possibly owing to the (ridiculous!) fear that if they did so, some portion of a supposedly finite pie would become lost to them.

You paid dga a very nice ProtoShares bounty to open-source his GPU miner code, and then a few ran off with the code, modified it to run on Windows, compiled it, did not (so far as I'm aware) publicly post their modifications of the source, but did release binaries . . . which mine a percent of the time to their own address. Meanwhile, I for example want access to the source so that I can e.g. modify it to recognize more than one graphics card--I might hastily pull the source, code my proposed changes, and push it back up if the source was there -- but I can't: yes, a lot of miners are making ~10x the profits they previously did . . . while innovation is stifled for the gambit.

(By the way, EDIT: I keep waffling about whether I support completely open-source code for miners or closed-source where I donate a percent of mining to the coder. I think I'd like both together best.)

Your development philosophy/social contract etc. may have difficulty gaining full traction among the very folks who are most enthusiastic about the potential outcomes of your work!

What kind of traction do you expect your model will find among, say the Really Big Boys?

It's simply fundamentally incompatible with the mechanisms they've exploited to make their untold fortunes. That is a hard, hard sell. (Apparently, even among many of your peers who highly esteem you.)

If Invictus Innovations wishes to be part of a truly global and truly transformative/distruptive movement, the fact of the matter is that you've got to be able to let folks who prefer a different playbook to operate from that playbook. And last I heard, the proprietary/closed/secretive playbook was still very much the playbook of, uh, the world's largest and most powerful corporations. (And many people who frequent this forum.)

The risk is that your work will probably be abused by so many silly fools. The benefit, however, is that in enabling (as you may suppose) people to do whatever they will, those who would abuse your work and yet who also wield enormous power--these will expose your ideas to the wider world. And you know what? The wider world will become curious, get educated about what's going on, and see that there's a better way to do it . . . and then they might be motivated to start up their own enterprises in a globally frictionless market, and wipe the Really Big Boys' arses with their better approaches and ideas.

And what of the folks who agree with your philosophy/approach? Well, whatever way you go with this philosophically, the folks who like your approach will follow it.

However, if the Really Big Boys are warded off by fear of breaking your model/social/intellectual property/whatever contract, the masses whom they could potentially expose the ideas to may therefore not be so exposed to such ideas (and their origins). But if the Really Big Boys are made very welcome to try whatever the heck they think is a good idea, they might give it a shot. Yeah they may be liable to not quite "get it," and make mistakes in what they try--there are hundreds of very ridiculous patent applications out there which for all the world describe only a shadow of Bitcoin, because the folks who file them simply do not yet fully grasp the technology, and the nature of this Blockchain Revolution, shall we call it.

And while the Really Big Boys are giving it a shot ... the stakes will be made higher for those who would play in the field even against the Very Big Boys . . . and the potential payoffs will therefore also be higher.

All that said, I would not wish to relinquish moral rights in my work (and I understand that a Public Domain Dedication cannot relinquish those rights, and that no license can). This includes the moral right to publicly object to any abuses of my work, knowing full well that my only accomplishment in such objections may be merely expressing my view. Which views may or may not be of worth to others. Which views may or may not liberally heap shame on others who flagrantly abuse my work.

To that end, you are entirely free to adapt that very text I cite above. Perhaps in the section:

Code: [Select]
==THIS WOULD BE A PREAMBLE IF IT ADDED ANYTHING OF WORTH TO THE PRECEDING AND IF IT CAME BEFORE IT==
-- perhaps in that section, you could express your wishes as to how people use your model/code/software/process etc., and opinion that all intellectually property is, well, malarkey. You could, moreover, describe the general organizational/process/logical/ideological/systems organization of e.g. Keyhotee/Bitshares/Distributed Autonomous Corporations/Blockchain-based contracts/Digital Assets, and assert e.g. your organizations' contributions of original expressions and ideas in software/social engineering etc. -- in other words, you could express and lay claim to intellectual property rights to everything original Invictus has created, and at the same time permanently and irrevocably deed all such rights to the Public Domain. It would meanwhile preserve your moral rights (more about that in a bit), which are in any case irrevocable, and moreover they are also the better power and influence in this enterprise (more about that in a bit).

As described, this would first dismiss the dangers of intellectual property trolls by making it prominently clear that no, these ideas were your ideas, and you dedicated as many of the rights in them to the Public Domain, so that everyone has the right to do whatever they want with these ideas--including using the ideas in ways that anyone would pretend to have sole rights to--while clearly, they don't actually have those rights--because everyone has those rights, and they are simply trolls.

A Public Domain Dedication would, I think, best open up the whole world of possibility to, well, the whole world. It would open up all the possible global risk/reward ratios that who-knows-what-people out there will discover and invent. Let silly bandits and nincompoops be silly bandits and nincompoops. But please make it as easy as possible to play with your ideas and code, because the people whom you hope will see through the bandits/nincompoops probably will, and as I've described, they'll probably be the ones to show up and show how it should really be done.

Also, if you express your ideology/social contract clearly in the section (of my above linked dedication) which I invite you to, and couple this with an expressed wish that everyone will follow that guideline, I think that might best vouchsafe your moral rights. This is because your expressed wishes will be coupled with the full risk of your gamble that people might abuse their rights and go against your wishes--and when they do, and when they topple as a consequence, so much better the lesson of experience both for them and for bystanders.

(And so much the better your right to get up and say "I told you so!--" although I hope you would let bitter experience punish people enough, without adding ridicule to defeat.)

Seriously, please freely adapt the Public Domain Dedication which I have written and linked above--who would not want to read something that so joyfully thumbs its nose at so many restrictions, if I may say so? Yeah, maybe some would write it off as simply loony. But folks who are inclined to write you off are going to do that anyway, whatever you do.

All of the above is why I think a Public Domain dedication is the best option. It would necessarily have to exclude everything you've made use of which is e.g. under copyleft/copyright models: I would just put all of your work in the Public Domain.

I have urgent legal advice for Invictus, which I will email or message to you privately.

[Asides: I'm inclined to agree with you that so many ideas around intellectual copyright are silly, btw, and this stunner of an article was among such things as began to persuade me thus: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20111005102810176

I might make exceptions for the idea of copyright of general creative, non-mathematical works, but, for anything mathematical (which is all software), I'm inclined to think because strictly and literally, all software is zeros and ones (or in the case of qubits, possibly any other number base system), it cannot and should not be copywriteable. Intel was laughed at for attempting to copyright the number 8086, but at the logical, literal, final express form of software, too many people copyright large numbers.]
« Last Edit: January 11, 2014, 08:50:27 pm by earthbound »
I think I'm not alone when I say I'd like to see more and more planets fall under the ruthless dominion of our solar system. -Jack Handey

Offline bytemaster


I talked with Andy last night and he said he is about 75% done tweaking the work barwizi started with.  I suspect he will be posting his edits soon.

I'll be waiting to see. This document is a priority, already it's absence is causing problems.

He has been sending me questions from time to time, so I know he is actively working on it.  Just got a question a minute ago.

lol, didnt we agree on public development  :D

I told him to post his progress tonight. 


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Offline barwizi

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I talked with Andy last night and he said he is about 75% done tweaking the work barwizi started with.  I suspect he will be posting his edits soon.

I'll be waiting to see. This document is a priority, already it's absence is causing problems.

He has been sending me questions from time to time, so I know he is actively working on it.  Just got a question a minute ago.

lol, didnt we agree on public development  :D
--Bar--  PiNEJGUv4AZVZkLuF6hV4xwbYTRp5etWWJ

The magical land of crypto, no freebies people.

Offline bytemaster

I talked with Andy last night and he said he is about 75% done tweaking the work barwizi started with.  I suspect he will be posting his edits soon.

I'll be waiting to see. This document is a priority, already it's absence is causing problems.

He has been sending me questions from time to time, so I know he is actively working on it.  Just got a question a minute ago.
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline barwizi

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I talked with Andy last night and he said he is about 75% done tweaking the work barwizi started with.  I suspect he will be posting his edits soon.

I'll be waiting to see. This document is a priority, already it's absence is causing problems.
--Bar--  PiNEJGUv4AZVZkLuF6hV4xwbYTRp5etWWJ

The magical land of crypto, no freebies people.

Offline bytemaster

I talked with Andy last night and he said he is about 75% done tweaking the work barwizi started with.  I suspect he will be posting his edits soon.
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline barwizi

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  • Noirbits, NoirShares, NoirEx.....lol, noir anyone?
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    • Noirbitstalk.org
--Bar--  PiNEJGUv4AZVZkLuF6hV4xwbYTRp5etWWJ

The magical land of crypto, no freebies people.