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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Make It Clear that this is Charitable |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 6
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
A number of us want rock hard- 'no doubts about it' gauranties that none of this information we're contributing to will be used for corporate, individual, or institutional gain. None of us want to be duped into crunching numbers so that BioInformatics (or whatever) can lock up a patent.
There has got to be a clear and absolute clause put into place - and easily found - that gauranties the fruits of any research from this project will be freely available and public domain. This clause should make it clear that should any group subsequently try to profit individually from claim to knowledge derived from this effort that they will be in violation of the means by which they gained that information and would be therefor inelegible - in toto - to benefit from that information. Ergo, if anyone tries to patent the info that's generated by this research that they are instantly and permanently rejected in that petition AND banned from further involvement in this project. Executive Summary: make it clear we aren't going to be screwed here. Make it bold and clear and convincing. It's fine if researchers make their name off this but Rutgers or Stanford or Wash U or... whoever is creating the protein models should not suffer the illusion that they can then turn around and patent things derived principally or wholely from information derived from this project. It has got be authentically charitable... in application as well as discovery. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Oh.. now see.. you've now crossed the line and your trying to be logical...
 Whilest I agree with you... the only way for this to wind up being totally in the public domain is for someone ( prefereably a school ) to patent it and at the time of patient, clearly state the patent is within the public domain for the betterment of mankind.... now... do we really think this is gonna happen???  |
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Alther
Former World Community Grid Tech United States of America Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Post Count: 414 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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You can find this information on the Request for Proposals page, specifically in the RFP document.
----------------------------------------The key points from the document that you are interested in are: * World Community Grid, with technology and funding provided by the IBM Corporation, is making grid technology available to public and not-for-profit organizations to use in humanitarian research that might otherwise not be completed due to the high cost of the computer infrastructure required in the absence of a public grid. * World Community Grid is designed as a resource for research done with a philanthropic or humanitarian purpose and will only be available to projects conducted for public and not-for-profit purposes. It will serve as a useful tool for the completion of a certain stage of research, hastening the progress of projects into further phases of development. Results must be made available to the global research community by the sponsoring research organization and remain in the public domain. The results will also be available on World Community Grid’s website for volunteers and other visitors. I encourage you to read the document for all the details. - Rick Alther World Community Grid Application Developer
Rick Alther
Former World Community Grid Developer |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I particaped in the orginal United Devices Anthrax study and felt good about it. I still had nagging doubts that my donation would be someday patented
and profited off my little contribution. I agree with "NoEcho" "Alther" makes good points, but I don't see ANY BOLD statements from the Board of directors saying this is garunteed to be " in the public domain" I have the deviced installed, and am waiting to open my firewall to it when I see assurances of these concerns...... |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
You can find this information on the Request for Proposals page, specifically in the RFP document. The key points from the document that you are interested in are: * World Community Grid, with technology and funding provided by the IBM Corporation, is making grid technology available to public and not-for-profit organizations to use in humanitarian research that might otherwise not be completed due to the high cost of the computer infrastructure required in the absence of a public grid. * World Community Grid is designed as a resource for research done with a philanthropic or humanitarian purpose and will only be available to projects conducted for public and not-for-profit purposes. It will serve as a useful tool for the completion of a certain stage of research, hastening the progress of projects into further phases of development. Results must be made available to the global research community by the sponsoring research organization and remain in the public domain. The results will also be available on World Community Grid’s website for volunteers and other visitors. I encourage you to read the document for all the details. - Rick Alther World Community Grid Application Developer Rick, I have read through these two statements a number of times and while IANAL, it seems to me that what these statements say is: 1. the technology of the grid will be used for humanitarian research; and 2. the onus on putting the research results into the public domain is on the organisation that is currently running their project on the grid. Correct me if I'm wrong in my interpretation. Having said that, I wonder if the information about the organisation and its statement of commitment to putting the results into the public domain should/could in fact be pointed to by the grid client for all to examine. Perhaps that seems a bit demanding, but it's a strange, patent-hungry, litiguous, greedy world we live in and the people willing to run this client are the kind that are in general morally opposed to that kind of thinking. Reassurance seems reasonable in that light. Regards, Kev |
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Alther
Former World Community Grid Tech United States of America Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Post Count: 414 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Since IANAL either take this as my interpretation, so take the following as you want. Having been intimately involved since inception, knowing the purpose of the project and that it's run under IBM's Corporate Community Relations program, rest assurred that the intentions are honorable for lack of a better word.
----------------------------------------I have read through these two statements a number of times and while IANAL, it seems to me that what these statements say is: 1. the technology of the grid will be used for humanitarian research; and 2. the onus on putting the research results into the public domain is on the organisation that is currently running their project on the grid. Correct me if I'm wrong in my interpretation. You are correct in this interpretation. The World Community Grid simply provides the vehicle for these projects to run. It is the organization's applications and data that are running on the grid and it is their responsibility to release the results. The Institute for Systems Biology is a not-for-profit organization. You can learn about them by clicking on the About Us link on their website. If you read the RFP, you'll note some of the other requirements that have to be met in order to run any project on the Grid. They must be a not-for-profit organization and they must release their results to the public domain. A contract is drawn up between World Community Grid and the organization and it's spelled out in the contract, so if the contract conditions are not met (e.g. not releasing the results), there is a legal recourse. How soon will the results be made available? That all depends on several factors including what kind of post processing needs to be done on the results gathered from the Grid. Each project will be unique in this regard. Perhaps that seems a bit demanding, but it's a strange, patent-hungry, litiguous, greedy world we live in and the people willing to run this client are the kind that are in general morally opposed to that kind of thinking. Reassurance seems reasonable in that light. Not at all. I understand where you're coming from. Be wary. Keep us honest.  Again, I encourage you to read the RFP for all the details. - Rick Alther World Community Grid Application Developer
Rick Alther
Former World Community Grid Developer |
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