Acceptance of Commercial(?)

[Yankton]

I was wanting to clarify my post earlier when you put this out. I'm not against a company making money off of what we do, face it - any of the drug research companies will be looking to make a profit off of the results. I'm more interested in having the work that I donate be part of the public domain, so that OTHERS can benefit from it also, not just those running the project looking to make a buck. I have no doubt that what we accomplish can be very useful to a variety of different objectives. But mostly to sum it up, Public work ---> public output.

[Sport]

As I said...everyone has a cash flow from some where....BTW I did finally cast my positive vote

[umccullough]

I vote yes because I frankly don't feel there's any sane way to define commercial vs. non-commercial when determining whether a project is eligible.

Most projects will end up being sponsored by an organization, university, or otherwise (and yes, universities are very much commercial).

The projects with some sort of commercial backing interest are more likely to remain viable over a longer term.

In the past, I wasn't very selective about which projects I crunched for, but these days I am more so (when power bills are hundreds of $ per month, one needs to reset priorities). What we really need is full disclosure - the vault should require projects provide up-front commercial information in order to be eligible, and make sure the DC-Vault users can locate and access this information.

[Bio1ogics]

Definitely NO

Why would you need DC? Because you have too much to crunch yourself. If it's in your business model to crunch interesting data with the purpose to market something, you should invest in the hardware yourself. Furthermore, if I would crunch for a commercial project, I would expect some return; if the project would market something in part because of my efforts, i would feel taken advantage of.
Maybe a flawed analogy, but i wouldn't give some stranger on the street money, because he needs it for his company.

And I completely agree with Bold_Seeker; the Vault will quickly lose it's appeal, when some teams will not crunch on a commercial project.

[Bio1ogics]

Oh, and being sponsored is not the issue; the manner in which the outcome of the project is used, is what counts.

[opyrt]

As I've written before, I have no problems seeing the difference between a project that accepts donations to be able to keep running and projects that run to make a profit.

RC5 and GIMPS have given the crunchers payouts on special occasions and Majestic-12 will soon. I see no problem with this... These projects are clearly not in it for the money, they have a project goal they want to achieve. If we look at AQUA (I know this thread is not about AQUA, but it's a good example), their goal is to perfect their own Quantum Processor. A product they own and sell. Their "public results" will be a graph presenting how much better this version of the processor is in regards to the previous one. They are not funded by donations, but by investors. And investors do not put money into something unless they get money back.

With that clearified; My vote is no to commercial projects. Projects that receive donations and funding to keep running is fine.

[Cow_tipping]

I also wouldnt like to see commercial projects being added to the Vault.
I don't like an extra moral dilemma besides the one that i have choosing between useless and useful projects that are in the Vault already. (no, i wont give examples )

[DigiK-oz]

I voted NO, for reasons already in this thread. I do not like to use my system, and pay for it's energy bill, if the project earns somebody else money.

Now what IS a commercial project is a good question, however it only becomes a real question if we decide to rule out commercial projects. So let's wait for the outcome of this poll :-)

In my opinion, any project actually being run and maintained by a commercial company is very "suspect" to being a commercial project at least. Projects run by universities, which are almost always sponsored in some way, are different in that the projects' results will be publicly available and so will benefit all.

I realize that there might be a thin line here. But currently, being non-commercial is not a requirement for vault inclusion. If it is, we can judge individual projects by that rule, whereas currently we basically can't (and do not need to).

Also, usually before a project is included, the users are asked their opinion about it. The project is judged on availability of work, responses of the admins and the other rules for inclusion. This will be just another rule for inclusion, on which users can either vote yes or no. Looking at the aqua discussion, many replies were (completely correct) in some form of "being non-commercial is not a requirement, so include it". If it is made a requirement, at least a NO vote for a certain project would be "legitimate".

[SazanEyes]

I'd like to see a clear definition of "commercial" before I cast a vote. It seems there are a couple possible definitions:

1. a project that will not make the results available in the public domain
2. a project that may release the results, but the results will be used to develop a for-profit product
3. a project that is run by a for-profit company and/or funded by investors expecting a return on investment

I agree that a project matching definition 1 would make me uncomfortable. I don't really have a problem with definition 3, because ultimately everyone wants to be successful (make money) or else they won't be able to pay the bills. The for-profit vs. non-profit/university categories are mainly bookkeeping. Definition 2 is more of a gray area.

Whatever is decided, I'm involved with the DC Vault because I want my team to be #1, so I'll crunch any project that will help my team get there.

[Yankton]

I agree. I am content as long as the results are released.

[alexc]

Hi all,

I did not vote either way since I am the project leader of Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine, however I wanted to do a post here this is a rather important topic that concerns us.

I am really up to my neck with stuff that needs to be done for the project, but thinking from point of view whether I'd personally take part in any project that is even vaguely commercial, then I'd look for the following conditions to be satisfied:

1) the project should be totally open about commercial side of it - this should not be done behind people's backs

2) commercial part of the project should be necessary for the project to survive and grow towards its stated objectives (otherwise it closes down)

3) profits from commercial usage should be shared with participants - not just in form of some upfront cash money for processing, but in form of shares that would reward them for effectively helping to build that company up

I could probably think of more, but I think those 3 are probably the most important ones, I am glad to say that our project in my view wholly satisfies those 3 conditions

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Just another thought here - there is little easy in trying any distributed project as by definition the task it tries to solve is hard enough to require more resources, but some projects are a bit easier than others - pigging back on BOINC infrastructure rather than developing your own, and also not needing massive processing capacity centrally (this requires money), and also any project that requires full time efforts and runs over long period of times (almost 5 years for us) would be pretty much impossible to do without some serious money.

The question is therefore how to get money - some are lucky to be in universities and they can get grants, others like SETI@home have capacity to raise money but even they have problems - anyone who is out of this framework will have very hard time surviving yet alone trying to accomplish something very difficult.

So, I do appreciate generally negative sentiment against "commercial" projects, but I think it would be worthwhile to keep some of my points in mind - if it's a "get-rich-quick-on-contribution-of-others" scheme, then I'd share negative feelings 100%, however if it's something worth supporting and displays consistently good attitude towards contributors then I think such projects are worth supporting

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Maybe the poll should be changed to: "Should commercial projects be individualy voted on for acceptance to the DC-Vault?" I am pretty sure in this case 90%+ votes will be for Yes and then projects can be judged on their own merits.

cheers

Alex

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by alexc

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Maybe the poll should be changed to: "Should commercial projects be individualy voted on for acceptance to the DC-Vault?" I am pretty sure in this case 90%+ votes will be for Yes and then projects can be judged on their own merits.

cheers

Alex

Alex - All project before going into the Vault have a thread made and in that time people have their time to say what they want to say about the project. But yes I think from now on we will make them polls. Only problem is, not many people post their concerns when a project is up for addition to the Vault

Thanks for your Posts all.. Seems this is getting more and more confusing the longer we post about it.

Originally Posted by Rusty

Should we define "What Commercial IS first?
What is a Commercial project. Do we classify a project commercial if they receive regular donations to keep it running?
Do we classify a project a commercial project if they run a TV/paper/net ad? or have an interview and it is published?

Seems like we need to clarify what we(as a DC community) see as a commercial project.

My veiw.

If a project/company has been setup to "find a drug" or win a "competition" to find the largest prime etc etc and make cold hard cash/profit, the returned results are kept for themselves and are not available to the "public", then this is commercial venture.

If a project seeks out funding from donations/grants or whatever and do not make a "huge" profit, to assist in the running costs of the said project, then this is a non-for-profit project.

[Beyond]

I voted yes but with some reservations. I'd like to see the results of commercial ventures provided openly. I'm also more interested in the advancement of human knowledge than in whether an endeavor is commercial or not. A problem is that commercial is hard to define. At universities, discoveries are often patented and then the fruit of our work goes into their coffers. Is that commercial? Sounds like it to me. Everything needs to get paid for. This proposed rule just seems like another excuse for nitpicking arguments and attempts at Vault manipulation. I'm against manipulation.

[leavitron]

I have not voted because I haven't really seen a satisfactory, viable definition of commercial. I know Rusty posted one, but to me that appeared to be his personal definition. IMO, the admins of DC-V need to come up with a solid definition and then and only then will this vote really, truly matter.

[Beyond]

Originally Posted by leavitron

I have not voted because I haven't really seen a satisfactory, viable definition of commercial. I know Rusty posted one, but to me that appeared to be his personal definition. IMO, the admins of DC-V need to come up with a solid definition and then and only then will this vote really, truly matter.

Good suggestion. I'd like to see this up for discussion too. To me the real importance is whether the results are freely available to anyone who asks, "commercial" or not.