[alicebot-archcomm] archcomm membership

[Ernest Lergon]

Before putting this discussion on the general ML, I'd like to hear
comments from a smaller group more involved in AIML.

We have to differentiate between the foundation and the community:

The purpose of AIF should be to organize and maintain everything
concerning AIML - from the mailing lists up to the several
standardization committees.

To provide this, AIF has to raise money to pay for necessary bandwidth,
hardware or man power i.e.. If there is enough money, even promotion of
AIML projects in form of payed development could be imaginable.

But the committees should be build from members of the community, where
the amount of any payment to AIF is definitely no criteria.

In former times the members of the ArchComm i.e. have been chosen by the
AIF because of their merits. Those invitations have been issued due to
personal qualifications, publishing of interpreters or high profile
activities on the general mailing list i.e..

The AIF should formalize this procedure and involve the current members
of the committees. A good model gives the Apache Foundation - see
http://www.apache.org/foundation/members.html : A new member is elected
by proposal of a current member only i.e.

In this context raises another question: What have Franz, Pandorabots
(=Franz !) and Oddcast given to the AIML standard - aka what function
should they have in the ArchComm? Yes, they gave a lot to AIF - free bot
hosting, free server/bandwidth, free talking heads and even money - thus
promoting the idea of AIML, but did they contribute to the development
of AIML or its interpreters yet?

It should be obvious, that only natural persons - not companies - should
be members of the several committees. And here of course employees of
Franz (i.e. LISP developer to promote special aspects of AIML) or
Oddcast (i.e. to promote speaking features of AIML) should be invited.

On the other hand members should be removed from the committees after
some time of inactivity.

Please get me right: I'm not against cooperations between AIF and
professional business.

But again: There should be no relation of the membership at AIF, her
committees or the AIML community and any payed "membership" as heavily
advertised in the moment!

At all: The selling of knowledge - and this new "membership" is nothing
else - contradicts the idea of AIML being OpenSource. I think, it will
rather lead to an repression of development. Another problem might be
AIML snippets already published in the mailing lists: They are GPL and
can't be sold!

So the mixing of private business with community promotion is very bad
in the sense, that there is a 2-class AIML community about to be
created:

What bothers me most in the advertisement of this "membership" is
especially (* all quotes from the AIF join-page):

* Lets You Participate in leading edge research and development.
* Contains Proprietary Technology until 2004.

* You will also receive up to date publications from the A. I.
foundation ahead of the website and mailing lists. You will be invited
to join members only mailing lists and meetings where you can have your
technical questions answered personally by top A. I. scientists.

Oh, I forgot - this new "membership" is in reality a service of
Pandorabots:

* ALSO: Step-by-step documentation on creating your own subscription
based bot business with Pandorabots, updated periodically. Learn how to
make money by publishing your bot and collecting an e-commerce fee.

So why isn't this service called "business letter" or "money tips"? Why
is it mixed with a "membership" at AIF?

Ah, I see:

* Note: Subscription to Silver ALICE is a donation to the ALICE A.I.
Foundation, a nonprofit charity.

So it is no membership, but a donation?

Puzzled.

Ernest



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