path: root/2022/captions/emacsconf-2022-maint--maintaining-the-maintainers-attribution-as-an-economic-model-for-open-source--sid-kasivajhula--answers.vtt

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Okay, so we seem to be back. Sorry for the little shuffling chairs around. We are now live with

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Sid. Hi, Sid. Let me contextualize a little bit for the people because we are on Gen right now

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and the talk was happening on Dev.

NOTE Short recap of what the talk was about?

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Sid, can I ask you explaining what your talk was about in about

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one to two minutes? Yes, sure. The talk was called Maintaining the Maintainer's Attribution

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as a Model for Open Source Projects, and the idea is that instead of having an economic system based

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on supply and demand, which is capitalism, we have an economic system based on attribution

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and agreement, the power of our words, taking on incentives in the world, and that this can work

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for open source projects as a proving ground, and I think it can scale beyond that, and I hope it

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will scale beyond that in general. Okay, well I think you did, I'm not sure if you rehearsed

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this before, but that was such a perfect elevator speech for your talk. I am beyond amazed.

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Thank you, thank you. It's the adrenaline from being late and all the time zone shifting.

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You're not supposed to mention this, you know. You know, the things we keep telling people,

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you know, is that EmacsConf, yes, you see us rustling and being really grumpy when we don't

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get prereq, but really the live event is one part of EmacsConf, but really the better part of it is

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just having all the talks out of the head of people online, easily viewable, easily accessible

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with subtitles and stuff like this. So don't worry, it's fine if you're all right for submitting a

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prereq, it's fine if you don't show up to the Q&A, eventually we will find you, we will ask you the

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questions and all the data will be out there, so don't worry about it. Yeah, the magic of editing

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and stuff like that, you know. Yes, but we don't have it now, so we'll have to stick, you know,

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time is going to dilute, we'll have to stick with strict adherence to chronology right now. So

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starting with Sid, do you want to take the first question on the pad? Okay, let's look at them.

NOTE What's the incentive to pay?

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So the first question is, this seems to assume that there will be money contributions commensured

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with the value of the project versus everyone freeloading because there's no incentive to pay.

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Right, so actually there is an incentive to pay, so I think what the question is referring to

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is that everyone is going to pay to other projects, or no one is going to pay to projects because

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they're free anyway and you can use them and you don't have to pay, but one of the new things

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with attribution-based economics is the idea that in open source projects we agree, we all

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collectively agree on a fair market price for a project, and this isn't a price in the sense that

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you are prohibited from using the product until you pay the price, but rather it's for an accounting

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purpose, which is that if you pay more than that price, then that means you are now an investor,

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and so you can sort of, that means you are now attributable in future revenues that come to the

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project. So if you think there's a project that's going to do some nice things, you can essentially

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buy shares in it, except these are not ownership shares, they're shares and attribution because

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you contribute value by contributing money and that's attributable, so there is an incentive

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to pay, and I think, but also beyond this, the financial model is incredibly complex,

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it is much simpler than what we have today in a capitalist world, but still finance is a very

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complex thing, and I think we're in the very very early stages of figuring out the financial model,

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and I think there's a number, there's tons of open questions, needs a lot of help from people

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to figure these out, so there's promising angles here, but I think we have a lot to work out as

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well. Should I go to the second question? Yeah, feel free to do so, you are the master, you're

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in Q&A.

NOTE What do you think of projects like OpenQ?

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Okay, so the second question is, are you aware of projects like OpenQ, would that fit the

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model in your opinion? I'm actually not familiar with OpenQ, so maybe I should just move on to the

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next question and come back to that if we have time. Sure.

NOTE Are you aware of SourceCred?

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The next one says, I see incredible

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amounts of overlap with the source cred system, where attribution of antecedents, graph of

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contributions, fair in hindsight, backpropagation. Oh, backpropagation, interesting. I'm sensing a

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pattern though, so you are being exposed to stuff that you do not know, which is amazing, that

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brings an opportunity to do research later on, but feel free to delay those questions until,

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perhaps, I would invite the people who ask those questions in the pad maybe to describe in a little

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blurb that Sid can read, what is the meaning of those particular platforms, and in the meantime,

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Sid, you can move on to the next questions. Sure, but I will say one thing on the subject of both

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of these things, which is that I think it's significantly underappreciated the extent to which

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value is created in the world that is both independently created of other value that happens

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to be very similar, as well as dependently related and that may be unknown, and this is something

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that I call subliminal transmission, which is like if you think about a turbulent flow,

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you know, and that's what our world is, you know, we like to have all these linear narratives and

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simple stories where I think if you take all of Wikipedia, right, even a single person's life

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has more information and richness than all of Wikipedia, so when you think about it in those

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terms, you realize just how small our stories are in expressing what really happens and what has

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really happened in the world, so from that perspective, I think there's this thing called

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subliminal transmission, which is like a turbulent flow where you have little vortices that appear

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here and then they disappear, they're gone, but then you see them again here and they're like

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bigger, but they're the same, and then you see them in a different place and they're not the

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same, they're different, yet somehow the same, and I think our world is like that, and if we have

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an economic system that's capable of not saying that, oh, it should be this other way, which it

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isn't, but in fact we see this is how it is, let's make sure that we recognize this and empower the

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right voices, given that this is how the world is, and from that perspective, I think projects like

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OpenQ and SourceCred and any number of others might exist which are creating value in the world,

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and I think that we all deserve to be empowered, you know, if we're creating similar kinds of

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value, then these are voices that have something useful to say for us moving forward, and they

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deserve to be empowered, so yeah, it doesn't have to be causally related, you know, you can have

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empowerment of all of these different projects because they work together, so yeah, very long

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-winded answer to a short question, or non-question, meta-question.

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You're fine, you can be as long-winded as you want, because honestly you have been so

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eloquent in your answer, and the little ingestors that accompany these little vertices

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do carry on with as much velocity as you want. We will be going until about

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52-53 of the current hours, which means we have about 20 more minutes. Also, we have a lot of

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questions in the pad, so I would prefer if Sid started answering the questions over the pad first,

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but we are going to be opening the pad in about six to seven minutes if you want to join and ask

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questions live to Sid, but in the meantime, Sid, sorry, I'm getting tired, it's late, in the meantime,

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Sid, feel free to answer more questions. Sure, okay, thank you.

NOTE How is this different from money?

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The next question is,

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how is this different from money? Not in some abstract ownership versus attribution way.

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Open-source funding is an incentive problem, which this does not change as far as I can see.

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So, on the one hand, it does add new incentives, as we talked about. I'm not sure about the question

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of how this is different from money. This isn't proposing to replace money in any way.

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Rather, it employs money as, you know, the mechanism by which we recognize value. I think

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money is perhaps something that can be revisited and, you know, reflected upon in the future,

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but I don't think we need to do that at this stage. At this stage, I'm content to rest on the

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black box abstractions of certain things that we've already developed, like money,

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as a means of exchange and as a means of recognizing value, and I think we can use that,

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so I'm not trying to replace money. Open-source funding is an incentive program. This doesn't

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change incentives, so I think we already covered how it does add incentives in the sense that you

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can invest in open-source projects, which is a new incentive, and, you know, we also talked about

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how there are some unopened questions. I'm not sure if this is one of them.

NOTE How would you approach a viable experiment for ABE?

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How would you approach a viable experiment? So, the prototype that we have, that we talked about

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in the talk, so there's a prototype, for those who didn't watch the talk. We have an open-source

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project, you know, it's a GitHub action, and, you know, I love to support other platforms. I'm not

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married to GitHub in any way. I don't have any special affection for GitHub. I don't have any

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special affection for GitHub. But it's a GitHub action at the moment, and what it will do is,

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when you follow all of the processes in the Constitution, which says, you know,

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open-source repository, create an issue that solicits related work reports from members of

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the public, and then create this folder structure which has a report of the contributors and this

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and that, once you do all of that, like initial logistical work, this GitHub action will process

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fresh payments that come in, which you report as single line item files, text files. Everything is

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text input and output, and then, you know, you can basically get all the accounting done for you by

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this system. So, that's what the nature of the experiment is, and I think we're starting with

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just one or two repos, because there's tremendous number of unresolved questions, and it's all going

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to be resolved through dialogue, agreement. We all decide how this thing works, and I think,

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you know, there's, yeah, so we'll see about how the experiment goes.

NOTE How do you constrain the cognitive and time burdens of deciding the values of attributed contributions?

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Next question, given that

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oversight is a social process, how do you constrain the cognitive and time burdens of deciding the

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values of attributed contributions? Okay, this is a great question. So, first of all, you know,

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let's talk about long-term vision, right? Long-term vision, I don't imagine that any of us, that is,

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the actual contributors to the projects, are going to have to worry about this at all.

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We're not going to have to engage in this process of what is called dialectical inheritance

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attribution, which is, you know, it's a lot of work. There's all these standards and precedents,

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and how do you compare ideas versus works versus the materials that went into the project? It's a

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very hard problem, and I think it's something we'll be improving upon for possibly even decades.

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But at that stage, I believe there will be experts, much like today's investment bankers

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and lawyers, investment IP lawyers. These are the people who are going to specialize in it,

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going to be professionals, and that's the kind of work that they're going to do, and we can leave it

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to them. But at this stage, yes, we have to do it. We have to set these principles and standards in

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place. And how do we constrain that? We start with simple heuristics. So, initially, we want to have,

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you know, if you can imagine, this is, I don't know, this is probably a bad metaphor, but if you have,

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like, a big hole and you're trying to patch it, you know, if you put, like, little tiny things on

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it and try to focus on little tiny things, okay, what I'm trying to say is order of magnitude,

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right? Let's solve the problem at the first order of magnitude and then get the little harmonics

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and, like, solve those over time. So, basically, we want to have usable, workable heuristics that

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are low maintenance that solve the majority of the problem for our immediate purposes and then

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iterate on those over time and develop proper models, which I think we will start to do in the

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next phase. The initial phase is heuristics that are easy and low maintenance and useful.

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Right, Sid, I just want to barge in a little bit. I just want to let people know that we have opened

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up the Q&A BBB window right now, so the same spiel as usual. If you want to join Sid and ask questions

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directly, we still have some questions in the pad. Don't worry, Sid will get to them first.

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But if you want to join and have a discussion with Sid, we have until about, we've got about

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20, 18 minutes left of discussion there. So, please do not hesitate. This is a very interesting talk.

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We have a very interesting speaker as well. So, use this opportunity, please. In the meantime,

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Sid, you can answer more questions. Sure. Should we take one from the field?

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I guess while people are thinking about it, I'll take one more question, maybe.

NOTE How are the attribution amounts calculated?

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Okay. So, the next question is, how are the attribution amounts calculated?

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Okay, how are the attribution amounts calculated? This is going to be done through standards.

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So, there is a, there's a repo, you know, if you go to the github.org account, dream-org,

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d-r-y-m-dash-org-slash-foundation. This contains the founding documents of how we will manage this

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process. And it can, it is, it will contain more standards. It has a few at the moment, very high

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level ones, but we will keep adding more standards there that are general enough to be universally

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applicable, and that can be specialized to the individual projects. And the attribution is going

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to be decided by these standards, by the members of the public, members of the community.

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Yeah. And they calculate, they must add up to 100%. So, it's, you know, and that's okay, actually,

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I should say. One of the mechanisms by which attribution will be done initially is this heuristic

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procedure called the Analyze, Appraise, Anonymize Attribute Loop. What that means is we first

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analyze the project, decompose it into its components, and we can do any number of such

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analyses, any number of people can do these analyses, and there can be a decision procedure

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for combining them. But that, I digress. We'll keep it simple first. We analyze the project into its

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components, then we agree on the proportion of value contributed by each of those components,

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then we analyze the activities done by the contributors, and then we analyze the

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activities done by the contributors and anonymize them. And we say, this was done, this was done,

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this was done, this was done. This is how much proportion of value these activities contribute

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to each of these components. And then once you have this chart, this graph of all of these

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connections and proportions of value, then you anonymize and you aggregate the sum of proportions

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of value by contributor. And contributor is not necessarily a person, a contributor is a

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project, it can be an antecedent, it doesn't have to be a direct contributor to the project,

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it doesn't have to be someone who wrote code, it can be a person who created a bug report,

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or a person who had a good idea for the design. And anyway, so once you do this, you aggregate

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by contributor, you have a set of proportions that total up to one, or a set of percentages

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that total up to 100, that dictate how the revenues that come into the project are to

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be divided amongst all of these antecedents and contributors. Let's see, what's the next question?

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Okay, the next question is being written down as we speak.

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It's fine, we can wait a little bit.

NOTE Synchronicity with Bastien's talk last year

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In the meantime, I'll just mention,

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so actually, when we keep track of presentation for Emacs, we do have slugs for them. And this

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year, the slug for your talk, Sid, was made. And it was not an anodyne choice, because last year,

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we also had another talk by a maintainer, or well, the org maintainer, or one of the org maintainers,

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Bastien Guerri. And it feels like Bastien's talk was mostly geared towards sustaining

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maintenance, and your is more about maintaining the software effort in general. And it feels like

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the two talks are related, but yours seems to be more, I wouldn't say visionary, I think they are

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very complimentary in nature. I'm not sure, have you been able to watch Bastien's talk from last

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year? I have not, but that sounds very interesting. I'll definitely check it out after this.

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Right. And I will now stop my blabbering, and you can answer the last question.

NOTE What are your assumptions about human nature?

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The last question is, what are your assumptions about human nature,

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vis-a-vis self-interest versus altruism? The funny thing is, I don't actually feel like

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we need to opine on that, from the perspective of an economic system. I mean, yes, we have to

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recognize that, you know, some people will say, oh, human nature is fundamentally selfish, or,

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you know, we have to be good, and we have to help each other. And I think both of these perspectives

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are not necessarily, you know, I don't know if they're necessarily the right way to think about

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it, because you have the idea about, well, capitalism assumes people are fundamentally

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selfish, or they have to act that way in order to be rational in the system. That's one side of it.

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The other side of it is this notion of altruism, right, that somehow you have to help others,

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and that, you know, there's like a charitable component, and you have all these people who

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make billions and billions of dollars, and then, you know, start giving that away. Which,

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you know, if you're going to make billions and billions of dollars, and you give it away,

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and like help the world, that's better than not giving it away and not helping the world.

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On the other hand, the fact that you got those billions and billions of dollars in a capitalist

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economic system, which fundamentally skews the value recognition in ways that, you know, is very,

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very subversive and very, very minimizing of the source, the true sources of value,

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means that you've led yourself to go down this path and essentially unwittingly and inevitably

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ended up causing a lot of problems, too. Like, it's not necessarily the case that if you're

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wealthy in a capitalist economy, that you've created a lot of value, because yes, you have,

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but at the same time, the net value is not guaranteed to be above zero, really,

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because capitalism can't express all forms of value. So I don't think thinking about self-interest

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versus altruism is the right way to think about things from the perspective of economic systems.

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In an economic system where the incentives are so set up that the maximum value to all

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is recognized the most, then it's inevitable that people want to do that. And it doesn't mean that

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you're a naturalistic person or a selfish person. You're just going to do it because there are

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incentives that are set up that way that everybody agreed on. And I think in such a system, your own

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sort of spiritual inclinations towards this are secondary. Not secondary. I don't want to say

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secondary. I want to say that they are up to you. And your actions in the world will be rewarded to

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the extent that you help others. The more you give, the more you will be empowered. So from

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that perspective, you could say that the system rewards altruism. But at the same time, if you're

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just giving and you're not in a position where... I mean, the system ensures that if you give,

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you're also taken care of, so that you don't have to choose between altruism and selfishness.

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Altruism is empowering yourself. So that's kind of the beauty of this system, really. That's the

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beauty of an attribution-based system is that you become more empowered by giving more. But we don't

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have to get into the spirituality stuff of it, really. It's beside the point as far as the

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mechanisms of the economic system go. All right. I think that was the last question, unless I'm

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mistaken. That's the last one I see. Yes. Well, you did a fine job answering, however, many

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questions before. Again, very lengthy, as you said, but very eloquent, as I will say to you.

NOTE What is the URL of the project?

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There is one question that appeared on ISE, which was the URL of the project. You mentioned

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dream.org. Would you be able to maybe type it out in the chat so that people can

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check it, and I'll place it on ISE for the person that was asking? Or on BBB, it's fine, too.

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It's actually dream-org. Oh, that's why I did dream.org, which was the problem.

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It's the GitHub repo.

NOTE Check out the prototype, "Old Abe"

00:21:45.002 --> 00:21:47.280
And actually, sorry, you should also check out

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dream-org.old-abe. That is the billing prototype, which is the GitHub action,

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which you can add to your repo. And it's got all the startup instructions for how you can

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set up attribution-based economics. So I'll let you type it out. github.com slash dream

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dash org slash old-abe.

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It's good for you for remembering it. I will place this in BBB right now. Sorry,

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not in BBB, in the pad so that people can click on it.

NOTE Closing Remarks

00:22:29.520 --> 00:22:32.640
Sid, is there anything else you'd like to

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say? We are about at the end of the Q&A right now. I guess attribution-based economics is open for

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business, as it were. So if you can go to some of the repos at the dream-org GitHub org account,

22:51.280 --> 22:56.240
many of those repos are starting attribution-based economics. And simx.el in particular is one for

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the Emacs community. So I encourage you guys. And of course, old-abe, that's another one that

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started. And that's the only one that's actually ready to accept payments and distribute payments,

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because we have done the attributions already, given that it was written in the last few days.

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But the other ones, we might start payments out, I think, on January 1. So between now and January

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1, we'll start doing the attribution process and deciding the antecedents, who's owed what,

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what proportion of value came from whom, and all that stuff between now and then. And then we're

23:28.080 --> 23:36.880
going to start paying out from the repositories January 1 is the plan. If you can contribute to

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these projects, then that would help prove the model out, and that would create incentives for

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people to join. So I encourage you to do so. Thank you. Well, thank you. You've definitely

23:45.920 --> 23:50.320
made a very nice case for it, and people can make their own minds now by checking the link.

NOTE A flicker of light and following your curiosity

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We really encourage you to follow up on a lot of the talks. It's one thing. One thing that we always

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say with Sasha to the people, be they speakers, be they user group members, is that Emacs can't,

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and user groups, any kind of community activity for Emacs is about curiosity. And it's one thing

24:08.000 --> 24:14.960
to ignite the flame of curiosity in some peoples. It's actually much better to actually follow the

24:14.960 --> 24:19.120
fuse and see where it leads you. Because, you know, it's a little fuse, a little tiny flame,

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a flicker of a flame, a flicker of light going in a direction that might explode so much curiosity

24:24.000 --> 24:32.960
later down the line. I was talking earlier with Blaine about, you know, oh, last year he was

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presenting, it had only been six, it had only been, I can't speak English, it's 10.45 a.m. in

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my time zone. I'm starting to tire. But he had only started using Emacs six months prior to

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presenting, and he was already so proficient in it. And it feels like, it's kind of like in Lost,

24:51.040 --> 24:55.280
you know, when you have the rope and you pull on the rope and it brings you so far away. Well,

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do follow this curiosity, be it for what Sid has presented to you today, but for any of the topics

25:01.200 --> 25:04.960
that we've presented to you today. So thank you so much, Sid, for all your time, all your

25:04.960 --> 25:09.280
presentation, and your answers. Thank you so much, Leo. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.