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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Does no one find it strange that this thread is now 2 and a half pages long and not one "official" person has answered this simple question? Where are the "moderators"? Or have they been told to keep their mouth shut and let the "members" flounder around and guess the answer? Their silence seems to suggest that the answer is "no" and they realize that they would kill the project if they confessed up. So, where are you, moderators??? Speak up. We deserve a straightforward answer. We should not have to guess or "interpret" corporate statements on other websites. MOOSE, WHERE ARE YOU? I think that some of the posters are working in/for this project, although they are "newbies" or "strangers". Maybe it should be made clearer in their posts what their position within the project is. Besides, as this is a pretty big project, the moderators or admins of this forum may not be in the position to answer things like that. For me the content of the rfp.pdf is pretty straightforward. I agree that a clear and easy to find statement on the website would be helpful, but this has been launched only 3 or 4 days ago. What I am saying is, although it is justified to voice our concerns, give them some time. This surely is worth to be patient. martin |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Strobe74: Full ACK!!
I will shut down the clients now and go back to more senseful projects. E.g. Folding@home. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Just another two cents.
First I think a dicussion of the term "Not for profit". That does not mean the organization can't receive money for their work, it means that they cannot CLEAR any money. If the proceeds are used to pay researchers buy the neccesary equipment etc. they are still deemed "Not for profit". Ex: The lighthouse for the blind, makes and Sells all kinds of stuff. The proceeds are then used for further manufacture. Still "Non-Profit". If the drug companies use this number crunching to develope a drug, let them patent it. They still had to do 10-25% of the research, and had to know what to do with our results. Also the patent only lasts 5-10 years and then is opened. A statement earlier suggested that the "first prize" would be the patent. The first prize would be the CURE. Another suggestion was leave it open so other drug companies could do the same 10-25% research and develope the same drug. Lets be realistic. The moment the first pill hit the street the other companies would run it through a spectrum analyser and have the exact compound within minutes. No research required. Don't get me wrong, I think the drug companies make far too much money now, but that's a discussion for another forum, and some sorely needed legislation. Someone is going to profit from a cure for anything, but why not next year instead of ten years from now? Turn em off if you will, I'm going to help find some cures. Thanks for listening. George Curley USN RET. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
It's a very important question and I'm concerned too. So this thread has to be TOP 1!
![]() Hello from Berlin Willi "No Team Please! International" |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The way I see it, it's pretty clear how this system works.
The grid itself is the base. Projects are chosen to run on it by a board of experts who decide based on several key factors, such as the general accesibility of the data after the project is finished, how easy the raw data is going to be implemented on the grid and how important the research is for the world community. The group that is in charge of the current project are a non-profit organization. They have to be to be considered eligible to submit their project to the grid. This is what I got from the information provided by this thread. Perhaps drug companies will use the results to further their own research, but that has nothing to do with the grid or us. It's really pretty straightforward. And I don't believe threatening to shut down the agent and posing ultimatums is going to do anything. It reads like whining children, though of course that's just my lowly opinion ;) I'd say chill and see what happens. There is no indication that this system does anything other than what it says. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I don't think the question is about whether the end results of the work done on the grid are put out in the public domain or if the companies requesting the work are non-profit. It's been stated that those 2 things are the case.
My problem is that an immense amount of work is being done here for free by people with good intentions, and is meant to benefit everyone equally. If drug companies can wait for this work to be done then patent some small piece of work that takes it from it's state here on the grid to a working cure, and then patent that small amount of work so that nobody else can create the cure but them, then we have a problem. This scenario would defeat the purpose of the grid. The companies that patented the cure would not make this available to everyone like the people working on the grid want. They would make it available to wealthy. Just by example look at the aids drugs made in America today.. they have paid off the crook politicians so that other POOR countries HAVE TO buy the expensive stuff instead of a cheep replica made outside of the United States. Frankly this is BS and I don't want the grid's work used to perpetuate this trend. Please realize that many drug companies have satellite companies that are non-profit. I believe this can be used to get their projects done quickly by the grid (and for free i might add) and then the parent company to the non-profit company has a big lead (since they are already focus on this particular illness that's being done on the grid) and uses it to get to a cure first which they WILL PATENT. (you can bet money on it) I see this as a nice way of taking advantage of the grids work to be used for the personal gain of the drug companies and in the long run not resolving the problem of medication for illnesses being too expensive for EVERYONE in the world not just the elite that can afford it. Some kind of license needs to be agreed to by the companies that use the grids work. It needs to state that they CANNOT patent work that is a derivative of what is done here on the grid. This in no way stops them from creating a cure off of work done here, but they cannot create a monopoly from it. I think that' is fair since they are getting free work done that they cannot afford to do themselves. GPL software is the same. you can use the code freely in your own project but you cannot close the source of your work to the public and sell it. If you want to sell your software with GPL protected code in it, you have to leave your source open as well. This protects the people doing the work from someone coming in and copying the work of others, and then saying it's their own and making a fortune off of it without having to play by the same rules as the ones who made their code to begin with. I think this is completely fair and should be how the grid works. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I wish IBM had made this clearer so that this entire thread need not have happened. For all that it's worth, here's my take on the issue.
* PEOPLE WORRIED ABOUT THE CONTRACT NOT GIVING YOU THE RIGHT TO ALTER IT BUT GIVING IBM THE RIGHT TO ALTER IT: DON'T WORRY. This does not mean that it is all a scam. Clearly IBM can not give you the right to alter the contract yourself, that would (especially bearing in mind it is aiming for 10 million users) be completely daft. So why does it reserve the right to alter the contract? There are a few obvious examples of why IBM might want this right: e.g. if it makes the discovery that some aspect of the contract has been improperly drafted, for example, it would like to be able to redraft and make it effective immediately. It certainly doesn't mean that IBM can just turn around and add in a term that says "you must pay IBM $1000 every Friday". The contract is NOT a complete summary of the legal relations existing between you and IBM, you do have other legal rights! If you are suspicious that IBM will do something nefarious to the contract and effectively renege on the non-profit promises, for example, then you should also remember that besides legal protection you're also defended by the following fact. * IBM'S GOOD NAME IS IMPORTANT TO THEM. IF YOU ARE WORRIED THAT THEY ARE AN UNTRUSTWORTHY, EVIL CORPORATION BECAUSE THEY ARE INTERESTED IN MAKING MONEY, NEVER FORGET THAT THEIR GOOD NAME IS WORTH MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! They really don't want to do anything stupid and have it blow back in their face. It would cost them a huge amount of money, for starters. IBM's name is not a kiss of death. In fact the sheer fact that big business is interested in a charitable project is not a kiss of death either. The simple fact is that there are certain charitable projects that could only get off the ground with the help of large companies. They aren't necessarily interested in making a profit directly from the charitable concern - they are, almost certainly, acting to some extent in a self-interested way, partly because "business ethics" are something of a management fad at the moment, partly because charitable ventures give their good name a boost and partly because businesses often do stand to gain from the furtherance of education or science, or the reduction of poverty, whatever the particular charitable purpose is, and if they and other businesses, governments, universities, NGOs etc all work together for these aims then big business will reap its fair share (or more) of the rewards of progress when it happens. I don't know how many of you have thought about this, but this scheme has given IBM a massive amount of publicity (it's in so many newspapers, magazines, websites... which would be expensive to achieve) and a lot of good press (which is impossible to buy!). That doesn't mean it's wrong to engage in. Perhaps we should have a rule saying that only single men should contribute to breast cancer charities, since women and married men might actually stand to gain something -their own future good health or that of their wife - from making a donation and therefore their intent would not be purely charitable?? (Actually there are several philosophers who believe that although it wouldn't be wrong, in this example, for women to donate, they could not genuinely be said to have done so charitably. Whatever. The main point is surely that a good cause is being furthered?) * CHARITIES DO NOT REALLY BENEFIT EVERYBODY EQUALLY. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THEY ARE A BAD THING. Donating money to a heart disease charity won't help people who die in traffic accidents. Doing voluntary work for a community organisation for the blind won't help people who are deaf but not blind. Raising money for famine relief in Africa won't help people suffering from malnutrition in South Asia. Donating money to a breast cancer research charity is likely to disproportionately help people living in the richer part of the world, because it is unlikely that African countries for example could afford the price of the drugs produced, even if they were licensed on a non-profit basis. Of course, it would be nice if everybody could be benefited by any benevolent act. But if it is possible for a person to perform a benevolent act at virtually no expense to him or herself, and that act would benefit some (although not all) people, isn't is better if that person performs that act? Worst case scenario: a major pharma company asks people to join a grid for the development of a new heart disease drug. Here's the deal. It will keep all the rights. It will make a large profit from the drug, which will be so expensive that only millionaires could afford it. If people don't join the grid, then progress on the drug will be delayed, because the computing power required is beyond the expense of the drug development team. Should you join? Actually there's a good case for doing so. The longer the drug takes to be developed, the more people will die who would otherwise be saved. They're millionaires, admittedly, but that doesn't make their lives worth any less (or more!). And ultimately progress on making a future, cheaper version of the drug will also be pushed behind. It's missing the point to say that the company should pay for a supercomputer for the research - it only has limited resources, and ultimately all pharmaceutical advances rest upon a foundation of ever-advancing scientific knowledge, and we don't expect pharma companies to pay for ALL the world's scientific research, just in case they stand to gain from some of it. The relevant fact is that you have a choice, that might ultimately help people and turned it down - how can you be justified in doing so? Well, a good answer would be that you could do something else that would be even more helpful with those spare resources. But for reasons I am about to explain, you would be hard-pressed to find an alternative better than this project. * THIS PROJECT IS A SCIENTIFIC PROJECT. IT IS NOT A COLLABORATIVE ARTWORK OR SOFTWARE PROJECT. IT IS NOT A JOINT EXERCISE IN DESIGNING SOMETHING PATENTABLE. IT SEEKS TO EXTEND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE (AND ALSO TO PROPAGAGE IT FREELY). Comparisons to collaborative software projects are completely misplaced. To try and give an idea of what this project is like, lets retell an old true story with modern IP law. In the 1600s, European astronomers collected an incredible number of observations of the night sky. Lots and lots of numbers, available for analysis, and some serious number-crunching was required (a bit like the human genome information today?). Isaac Newton, whilst studying these data in conjunction with the problem of attraction between bodies, came up with his Theory of Gravitation - a model that actually made sense of the figures. But there is no way he could have patented gravity! Knowledge of the theory spread (actually Isaac Newton was not very good at knowledge distribution, whereas this project seems quite keen on it). People could use the theory to produce new theories, or to create a new design for something which they could then make money from. In fact, if they used the theory of gravity to produce a novel invention, they might well be able to patent it under modern law, and Isaac Newton and the original astronomers couldn't do a thing about it. But if somebody else could create a different invention using the theory, and that invention did the same thing, he could patent that instead and compete with the first inventor. Now, if Isaac Newton had written a glorious piece of globally-influenced music after studying the data of dozens of musical anthropologists around the world, he would have the right to feel peeved if people took his work and basically copied parts of it, using it to liven up their own work. But what he produced, although it possessed his intellectual stamp, was not a creation but a scientific discovery, an extra piece of knowledge for other people to use. And if somebody else uses it in the course of a new invention, then he simply can't claim the credit for that invention. This site is about the furthering of scientific knowledge and if you contribute to the furthering of scientific knowledge then you obviously hope that somewhere down the line something useful might happen. It is not a very forward-looking idea to be afraid that that useful something may result in somebody turning in a profit! Any grid that seeks to produce and disseminate scientific knowledge will have the same effect - whether the organisation running it is a business, a university or a charity. At least with a site that has open access to the results, you know that not just one organisation might stand to benefit, and that if one organisation finds a solution to a problem using the data produced, another organisation may find an alternative solution and compete with it. I understand that a lot of people have a lot of doubts (quite correctly, in my view!) about the fairness of the patenting system, especially for medical purposes. On the one hand, it is time-limited, it creates a profit incentive for companies to perform research that otherwise wouldn't be undertaken and it protects people's work from exploitation... yet on the other hand it makes drugs more expensive (at least in the short run) and doesn't allow poor countries fair access to them. I am actually quite troubled by the whole thing, although I wouldn't say that I was sure whose side I would come down on. It is a tough call. But it isn't a call that should affect whether you like the idea of this grid. It might be a call that would affect whether you would switch to a rival grid that produced the same kind of information but only propagated it to select organisations that promised to use it in a certain way, and not to exploit the poor or to make an excessive profit etc., but at the moment no such grid seems to exist and I do NOT like the idea of a grid that actively restricts access to knowledge like that. Anyway, what is a for-profit pharma company expected to do? Not be allowed to use the data from this site because it's "not theirs" (even though it exists and is in the public domain already), but rather divert money from other (potentially life-saving) research programs and spend it on computing precisely the same results, so that the company can now say that they're only using "the company's data"?? That's absurd. The grid's results do not belong to the grid. If it's a serious, open project then they belong to the world. And that means all kinds of nice, reassuring academic or charitably owned laboratories, as well as big pharma, all the world's Departments of Defence and ultimately the bio-chemical warfare research groups of nasty hostile countries. New knowledge brings new opportunities and new threats and many of the same old problems. But that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing. There is also a glimmer of hope. IBM is committed, among other things, to pursue projects (after this protein folding one) likely to benefit poorer countries. Unfortunately, it is likely that most of the types of project that require large scale computing power will be ones inherently likely to benefit the richer countries of the world, but IBM have identified the assistance of poorer countries as a priority, which is to be applauded, alongside their commitment only to projects where the results are put in the public domain. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Well said, MichaelCBrown!
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello from Russia!
Hmm... still no clearcut answer... Where is the moderator? Why there are no statements _in all languages_ on the first page? The projecti IS international. On the russian distributed projects portal the main thought is that the project is not worth participating.. I still think otherwise. But! I dont want to donate my CPU time to US corporations. Pity if I will have to switch back all my PCs to F@H.. Regards, Artyom. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Read their FAQ. "ISB's knowledge sharing environment stands in sharp contrast to conventional research institutions where individual researchers work in isolation in pursuit of narrowly defined goals. The Institute's approach is to focus its study on systems as a whole rather than on individual cells, genes or proteins. The comprehensive nature of this work demands integration in every aspect of the Institute's research. At ISB a multidisciplinary group of scholars and scientists, from biologists and mathematicians to computer scientists and physicists work collaboratively to help unravel the mysteries of human immunity and disease. Together they are working to identify strategies for predicting and preventing diseases such as cancer, arthritis, AIDS and diabetes." so does that qualify it as not for profit or more specifically, for the pulic domain or not? |
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