Introduction
This site is created and maintained by Nathan
Wilson using Open Source software whenever
possible.
The purpose of this site is to promote a variety of personal and collaborative
projects that I believe contribute to the development of new ways of thinking
about the world we share. These ideas are all in different stage
of development from a few sentences of description to useful software packages.
I view ideas not as personal property but as gifts that come to us asking
to be brought into existence. I am interested in talking with anyone
who is inspired by similar ideas. Most of all I am interested in
working on these ideas in ways that allow them to continue to be open.
The Problem with Patents
The following ideas are not patented. However, I do maintain documentation
on them in order to demonstrate prior art should anyone else attempt to
patent them. Patents are a mechanism that was developed hundreds
of years ago in order to encourage the propagation of ideas during times
when communication was slow and ideas could become lost if they were kept
secret. In the current day, patents are now a significant burden
on the evolution of ideas. They encourage inventors to work in secret
until they can patent `their' idea and they create an intellectual mine-field
where a creator can never be confident that they are safe to work on an
idea. Before sharing their idea with someone, inventors often have
that person sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). NDAs require the
person to keep the idea a secret and to not develop the idea on their own.
We Don't Have Time for Secrets
The biggest problem with this secretive approach is that it's slow.
The rapid, global, collective communication of the Internet has made slow
deadly. It has also made collaboration easier. Given this demand
for speed, an inventor should be doing everything they can to promote their
idea and to keep their name associated with it. If the idea turns
out to be a novel contribution, then anyone else who is inspired by idea
will be motivated to get in touch with the inventor to take advantage of
the inventor's knowledge and interest in the idea as well as getting access
to any collaborative effort that forms around the idea. In keeping
with this reasoning, the following idea descriptions are given out under
a Full Disclosure Agreement. The only stipulation of this
agreement is that the author information and a URL to this web site be
transmitted with the document. The documents are copyrighted by the
author, but permission for copying is given as long as the document is
copied in full with the author information.
I am actively developing a variety of different
ideas and am interested in finding others who find them interesting.
I am particularly interested in finding further funding for their development.
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Last Modified: April 15, 2000