I think it is reasonable to keep key parts not published until the network is implemented and running… and maybe waiting a bit further until getting to critical mass of users.
I personally believe it is totally fine if other projects use the libraries for other derivatives projects, having them all in full gpl3.
But delaying it a bit until launch won’t make Richard Stallman cry, it doesn’t really violate the free software philosophy.
Btw, i don’t think that having a poll will change David’s mind.
I think you have interesting and valid points in this case. My question above was about if it would be of interest to just get a feeling about what the community and team thinks, even if it changes anything or not.
I was thinking about this last night and though I completely agree with the sentiment I can’t help but feel it would be unfair for Maidsafe’s contribution to any code to go unrecognized. The fact they are defensive with GPL and the open source ethos is encouraging to others you wouldn’t go after them I think. To think if IOTA were to take Maidsafe’s hard work and profit from it when IOTA is currently very controversial in their closed source hashing functions, etc, would be very frustrating. But as you say David, you do have patents on some very important tools. Tools that would be desirable for a complete project. Just thought I’d respectfully share my thoughts
Put it practically, we rarely see the first mover or last mover and use the thing with best experience or best hype. As Maidsafe already spent and will spent a lot in development so polishing, marketing might (or not) be under-budgeted. Now another player can just take all the codes and invest in tweaking, polishing and marketing. Though I am not from software background but I think every code can be updated, given enough time and/or resources, and changed enough to make it smoother, better and all without the issue of patent infringement. My concern is that aspect. I am not really here for money (well partly obviously) but to be a part of this great achievement. I would really feel bad if SAFE Network does not get the appreciation it deserves and some other profit minded company takes all the credit. It happens all the time.
This approach is rather impressive. Drawing space-time graphs also really helps to visualize messaging/signalling for this kind of thing. In the SAFE case I suppose that would mean XORspace-time graphs. By “time” I mean a series of events relative to an observer.
