Remove Majestic-12?

[Beyond]

This is pretty much of a surprise to me. We started a membership drive a couple days ago to get more people to run MJ-12. One of the new members did some investigation and started asking questions. It's looking like MJ-12 has become a totally commercial enterprise with no unpaid releasing of the data that we have worked hard to provide for them. They're selling it for fees ranging from 10 to 250 British pounds/month. I don't know about you but I'm not up for supporting a project that takes our data and sells it, with no freely distributed release of results.

Check it out:

https://www.majesticseo.com/plans-pricing

Aqua didn't bother me so much because they were to be releasing the research data freely, but this is ridiculous IMO. Maybe commercial projects in general should be banned? I don't want to spend my money on crunching just to line somebody's pockets. There's too many great research projects out there to waste our support on this stuff.

[Rusty]

Are there any post/thread on the forum?

[Beyond]

Hi Rusty,

There's a thread about the LLP that's been around for a couple years:

http://www.majestic12.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3484

And a more recent one:

http://www.majestic12.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4307

We'll have to see if the LLP amounts to anything. So far it's been pretty vague. I haven't seen any kind of a disclosure of company finances, something that should be distributed to Limited Liability Partners as a matter of course. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun but it's been nearly 2 years since the LLP announcement and now the only way to access the search engine results is to pay a monthly fee (even for those that are considered "partners").

What do other people think about this? Is this a groundbreaking DC project model or are we playing the fool?

[Razor_FX_II]

Commercial projects are not breaking the DC-Vault acceptance rules and since there is steady work units and the project is open to new members, I think that it should stay in the DC-Vault.

[alexc]

Hi,

We provide free data to webmasters who can verify their own sites for free the same way they can in Google Webmaster Tools - literally tens of thousands of websites were verified for free by webmasters all around the world. Here is easy to check proof:

https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/...team-ninja.com

(you need to be logged in - registration takes seconds) - you will see free site verification instructions for this domain, you can verify any other domain. Hey even Microsoft used us to verify for free their own support domain, see more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/searchblog/a...backlinks.aspx

DCP LLP is real and our finances are transparent - we've announced first ever dividends paid in December 2010 - information about it was posted here: http://www.majestic12.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4307

I am currently battling to open bank account in order to pay out project members - this has to be done proper by the book (not personal paypal payment) otherwise tax office will crack down on it.

What Majestic SEO pays for? This for example -
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/06/prweb4192344.htm - this cluster enables us to rebuild web map in a much shorter time than before.

> What do other people think about this? Is this a groundbreaking DC project model or are we playing the fool?

Yes it is a ground breaking model that is actually working - volunteer project members are partners in the project and any commercial success that is due to a LOT of hard work (I've worked on it 6 years of which 5 were unpaid and spend all my savings on it earned in 5 years of work before the project) gets shared with those from the community who helped make it happen.

Please read our forums before jumping to conclusions.

Alex

Project Founder

[Ramokk]

I keep getting the message "Sorry! We couldn't find the domain name or URL you searched for in our database. Please check the URL or Domain below and Click the "Create Report" button." when I try to add one of my domains. The verification file is in place and it has never been blocked using robots.txt. The URL shows up in Site Explorer, so it's definitely in the database (the page before that error talks about the thousands of backlinks).

[alexc]

This might be a bug, can you give me URL that you follow and browser version, Chrome maybe? We had some odd reports after last weeks release about not found domains - if you have a problem with those just contact support and we'll help verify it manually. EDIT: we just traced this error message would happen if: 1) verification file is not empty as instructed OR 2) robots.txt prevents file from being checked We are going to fix it now.

[Beyond]

Originally Posted by alexc

Hi,

> What do other people think about this? Is this a groundbreaking DC project model or are we playing the fool?

Yes it is a ground breaking model that is actually working - volunteer project members are partners in the project and any commercial success that is due to a LOT of hard work (I've worked on it 6 years of which 5 were unpaid and spend all my savings on it earned in 5 years of work before the project) gets shared with those from the community who helped make it happen.

Please read our forums before jumping to conclusions.

Alex
Project Founder

Perhaps I jumped the gun on this and didn't do enough investigation after our users pointed out the commercial links. If so I sincerely apologize. On the other hand IMO it all hinges on whether the Limited Liability Partnership actually starts returning benefits to the people doing the crawling. I've participated in more than a dozen LLPs in the last few years and they all are required to send out yearly financial statements to the partners. They also all post significant returns.

[Biggles]

My take is that Majestic 12 is basically a commercial company that buys very cheap bandwidth off of crunchers in exchange for a nominal amount of shares and some stats. Our work units - the URL barrels - build their commercial product. Yes, there's a limited amount of free stuff, but unless you fork out £250 per month, you ain't getting all the results.

If Amazon decided to release stats for users of their EC2 service, would that constitute a DC project?

"Hey 99designs have used 148 days of CPU time and 100 GB of disk space, but Yelp.com have passed them with 150 days of CPU time and 150 GB of disk space! See the stats!"

PHP Code:

Team                CPU Time             Disk Space                Bandwidth
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anandtech           157:22:35            81,357,256                1,234,567
Yelp.com            150:00:00            54,864,987               10,456,789
SETI.Germany         98:10:11             7,234,918                  647,098 


It's actually not that different. There's no research going with Majestic 12. It's just our work being turned directly into a commercial project. I've read the forums and this is a business, not a DC project. Contributors are just building the MajesticSEO backlink database and any payout basically makes them investors. So unless we all start tracking our pension pots and get points for who is going to get the cushiest old age, then I find it hard to to justify why this actually counts as a project.

[leavitron]

Originally Posted by Razor_FX_II

Commercial projects are not breaking the DC-Vault acceptance rules and since there is steady work units and the project is open to new members, I think that it should stay in the DC-Vault.

This won't be the first time that the issue of changing the Vault rules has been brought up. If that is your hang up then *I* vote for amending the Vault rules to disallow commercial projects like this.

[alexc]

Originally Posted by Beyond (Ars)

On the other hand IMO it all hinges on whether the Limited Liability Partnership actually starts returning benefits to the people doing the crawling.

LLP was dormant until December 2010 when it received first dividends paid out by Majestic-12 Ltd to all shareholders - well, almost received - we did not have bank account open before company was dormant and I am doing it now - very difficult due to money laundering rules in UK but I feel we are near it. I have declared exact amounts in cash that were paid out - it's all on our forum and I am personally responsible to pay out that amount as soon as we get bank account and formally adopt rules. Now I wish I could make this all instantly unfortunately there is a lot of work in the project - I typically spend weekends in the office and usually work a couple of hours when I am back home in the evening. I hope to send actual money to partners this month - after that the system is setup so that payouts can be more or less instant. Note here - we only had it first time ever in 6 years, and we don't want to attract people to the project solely on the basis of money. That's why you don't see us paying cash to members just for participation, that's why you don't see us offering discounts or free subscriptions on Majestic SEO site for new members - we simply refuse to introduce short term element of greed into the system even though it might have given good crawling results short term.

Originally Posted by Biggles

My take is that Majestic 12 is basically a commercial company that buys very cheap bandwidth off of crunchers in exchange for a nominal amount of shares and some stats. Our work units - the URL barrels - build their commercial product.

If you check history you will find that we started in 2004, and Majestic SEO was launched in 2008 (that's nearly 4 years from start of the project) - this was time when it became clear to me that further work on the project alone without revenues for a couple more years would bankrupt me personally and project will have to shut down. Maybe that would have been acceptable for you or under rules of DC Vault but I am afraid that was not acceptable to me after putting some years of work, and let's be clear here - working for years doing proper R&D full time every day is a bit different from running distributed client and enjoying your life - you have zero risks when joining the project, nothing would happen to you if the project fails, that was not the same for me and it is not the same for employees who work very hard now for the company. Ironically the fact that we had distributed crawling required a LOT more effort - a well funded commercial company would be crazy to pursue this route because creating a crawler that can run in non-controlled home conditions is very very difficult: it's cheaper (if you have funding which we did not have at the time) to just rent out cheap bandwidth around the world.

Originally Posted by Biggles

Yes, there's a limited amount of free stuff, but unless you fork out £250 per month, you ain't getting all the results

Well, we simply can't afford to give out all data for free - those data requests would be automated and we'll have to shutdown as we are not a massive company that makes money from some other business - our hardware bill is sizeable every month, we've now got employees who have families that needs to get fed every month. If you think you can build a project that crawls the web, indexes big part of it without any costs then please do it - maybe you will be more successful than some of the people who tried to do what we did. Maybe you can come up with a better business model, but frankly I am pleased with ours - it helps us generate revenues we need and I am unwilling to follow alternatives that will certainly doom us to failure.

Originally Posted by Biggles

It's actually not that different. There's no research going with Majestic 12.

I beg to differ - if you think you can create distributed crawler (took 3 years of my life non stop coding), and scalable multi server indexing algorithms that manage to scale up to Google's levels without research then you should just try to do that yourself (without research) and show results to the public

Originally Posted by Biggles

It's just our work being turned directly into a commercial project. I've read the forums and this is a business, not a DC project. Contributors are just building the MajesticSEO backlink database and any payout basically makes them investors. So unless we all start tracking our pension pots and get points for who is going to get the cushiest old age, then I find it hard to to justify why this actually counts as a project.

Well you know, the project is open - nobody forces you to take part in it, frankly I think we are one of the most open projects and probably one of a few if not the only one that actually was setup to make volunteer contributors proper partners. Now you guys are entitled to have whatever rules you wish to have here - all I can say is with all due respect to the community here, from my point of view we have to look at what's right for our project's long term viability: closing down after 6+ years of hard work is simply not an option. Alex

[Da-Grizz]

Well I am with MJ12 on this one , it should not be excluded , as far as I can see , it is not breaking any DC Vault rules (as have some projects in the past) .
I vote with my Cwycles and bandwith costs , on quite a few projects , non of which I do for moneys or reward , apart from my personal well feeling (and a T shirt ) .

Some Teams (NO Names , no pack drill ) offer rewards for particpation in their POTM , are they OR the project excluded ? Nuff said .

I personally wish to see a truly non cencored search engine . To everyone reading this , please research MJ12 and concepts .

MJ12 has to finance itself , a SEO is how they have done this since 2009 , however it is FREE if you contribute to MJ12 . All Webmasters should explore !!!!!

Off me soapbox now , with one final word , Do Do your research on ALL projects before jumping to , quite frankly , premature conclusions .

Bests Regs Grizzly .

PS : I had to re-registed , cos I had forrgoted my password (DOH !) , Da-Grizz is still in the house

[leepfrog]

As a participant in the MJ12 project for several years now I second Grizzly's opinion regarding overhasty conclusions.
I believe you will have hard time finding a project which was kept alive by solely by one man for round about 4 years while dedicating every time possible to this project.

Everyone is free to participate/leave any time he wants. And from my personal view I feel I was never mislead by alex regarding the project goals or the development.

just my 2 cents

[Biggles]

Originally Posted by Grizzly

I personally wish to see a truly non cencored search engine . To everyone reading this , please research MJ12 and concepts .

MJ12 has to finance itself , a SEO is how they have done this since 2009 , however it is FREE if you contribute to MJ12 . All Webmasters should explore !!!!!

Off me soapbox now , with one final word , Do Do your research on ALL projects before jumping to , quite frankly , premature conclusions .

Three points based on just this: 1) they aren't building a search engine anymore. It's down, it's not working, all that's getting built is a commercial backlink database. 2) It's not free if you contribute to MJ12. There's a freebie account available, but it costs £250 a month to get the info (from our results!) that's worth having. 3) My conclusions are far from premature, that's why the points were raised here in the first place.

Originally Posted by alexc

Ironically the fact that we had distributed crawling required a LOT more effort - a well funded commercial company would be crazy to pursue this route because creating a crawler that can run in non-controlled home conditions is very very difficult: it's cheaper (if you have funding which we did not have at the time) to just rent out cheap bandwidth around the world.

The top 10 teams have donated more than 7 exabytes of free bandwidth to Majestic12. That's an incredible amount of bandwidth that you've had for free. And it wouldn't be cheap anywhere in the world.

Well, we simply can't afford to give out all data for free - those data requests would be automated and we'll have to shutdown as we are not a massive company that makes money from some other business - our hardware bill is sizeable every month, we've now got employees who have families that needs to get fed every month.

So you are a company, not a project then?

Let me ask you this:
What is the aim of the project now?
What research is coming out of the project?

Austensibly it was to build a distributed crawler for a search engine, but the search engine is down and has been for months, maybe even years at this point. The only thing our results are going to now is your commercial products. To quote the homepage of project "Majestic-12 is working towards creation of a World Wide Web search engine" - so when is that search engine going to be available? Why is there not a beta up and running? Why is it that MajesticSEO is working using our results but the project's aim appears to be abandoned?

I'm sure you've had to do a lot of research to build the client and all the back end server software, but what have you released in terms of actual papers? Because if you're not actually releasing the results of your research, it's not scientific research, it's personal development. Not all DC projects have a tangible result like finding possible cancer cures, but they at least produce some sort of academic research that can be built on by others. None of that is being released by the project either.

Ultimately, I don't believe that Majestic 12 constitues a DC project. Sure, it's distributed, but this is a commercial enterprise now, not a project to release a better search engine. But that's what people signed up to do.

Maybe you can come up with a better business model, but frankly I am pleased with ours - it helps us generate revenues we need and I am unwilling to follow alternatives that will certainly doom us to failure.

Of course you are pleased with the business model - you're getting a community of people to build a commercial product for you, and all it costs you is 20% (the value of DCP shares) of profit. If you had to buy the bandwidth that's been donated, it'd be far in excess of the dividend.

For what it's worth, a lot of people are breaking the terms and conditions of their ISP if they make money off of their broadband connections.

I beg to differ - if you think you can create distributed crawler (took 3 years of my life non stop coding), and scalable multi server indexing algorithms that manage to scale up to Google's levels without research then you should just try to do that yourself (without research) and show results to the public

I don't think I could. But none of that is relevant to whether or not Majestic 12 constitutes a DC project.

Now you guys are entitled to have whatever rules you wish to have here - all I can say is with all due respect to the community here, from my point of view we have to look at what's right for our project's long term viability: closing down after 6+ years of hard work is simply not an option. Alex

I'm not for one minute suggesting you close down Majestic 12. I'm just suggesting that it's not a proper DC project and that it shouldn't really be here. It goes against the ethos of DC projects because it's not altruistic. We're subcontractors for a commercial company that both pays with shares and stats.

[Beyond]

Originally Posted by alexc

Now you guys are entitled to have whatever rules you wish to have here - all I can say is with all due respect to the community here, from my point of view we have to look at what's right for our project's long term viability: closing down after 6+ years of hard work is simply not an option. Alex

Hi Alex. Not suggesting at all that you close down, just brought up the question of whether MJ-12 is appropriate for the Vault. Whatever is decided I'll probably keep participating personally. By including a project in the Vault we're virtually forcing teams to run it and I'm not sure that's an appropriate thing to do for projects that are primarily commercially oriented.