altanapps/agiguild

Open Source AI Guild

Open Source AI Guild

Open Source AI Guild (OSAI) is a guild of developers who believe that AI development must be open source. Members of the guild will make decisions about funding and research by participating in an open decision process.

This is a call for those interested in working on and defending open source AI to join the Guild and contribute to this repository.

Add projects and organizations that are using Collective Ownership License to Awesome List.

The Problem: Open Source Is In Trouble

The current open source software movement doesn't have a clear monetization strategy, and in turn becomes a game for large corporations to exploit. Challenges between research use and commercial use of models are becoming more common, indicating that the current approach is not serving software developers and researchers.

Great developers who can push what is possible need to join large companies or gamble by starting a startup and spend more time pitching and trying to figure out a sustainable business model. Artificial Intelligence technology generally belongs in the public domain as it benefits the whole of humanity and the individual parties having non privacy related know-how lead to stifling innovation and accelerationism.

The US and some other countries are considering legislation that would stifle Open Source AI development, including KYC on compute, regulatory requirements stifling what individuals and startups can do, and potentially considering foundational AI models as dual-use technology, which will limit who can work on AI and limit open sourcing of models.

The Solution: Collective Ownership License governed by $AGI token

Today there are three popular licenses used for open source: MIT, Apache and GPL (source). The GPL license is the most restrictive, requiring derivative works to be also open source, limiting the adoption by corporations and protecting the open source nature of the code. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the MIT license which enables anyone to use the code without restriction which results in high adoption but the contributors are not rewarded for the value produced.

We see a need for a new license that attempts to bridge the chasm between these approaches, encouraging innovation while also protecting and rewarding contributors who choose to develop open source IP for the good of all.

By developing a new type of open source license – the Collective Ownership License – that adequately rewards contributors in a cryptographically provable process, the OSAI Guild aims to shift the current economics of research and development in favor of more open and transparent approaches.

Collective Ownership License

See LICENSE.md for license text

The Collective Ownership License (COL) is designed to:

• Allow anyone to build on top of the licensed technology for research, non profit or open source purposes.
• Commercial organizations may use licensed Work under conditions specified by Open Source AI Guild.

This is a modified Business Source License (BSL) where the Guild (facilitated via DAO software) can define commercial use terms.

$AGI token

Read in more detail the Token Economics.

Open Source AI Guild is stewarding the funding of research and rewarding of contributors with a cryptographic token, $AGI.

There are two primary users/holders of $AGI:

• Open Source contributors are given $AGI for their work. Initial distribution will be based on past contributions to Open Source AI.
• Companies with over $1m in revenue who are using software under the COL license must acquire and stake $AGI to use the software. Through staking $AGI, value will accrue to all $AGI holders.

Commercial organizations that want to use IP owned by the Guild must stake $AGI token, in an amount proportional to their annual revenue. The exact formula can be X * min(0, revenue - 1,000,000), where X is specified by the Guild but suggesting to start at 0.001.

For example, a company that makes $2m in ARR must stake $2k of $AGI in order to use all of IP licensed by Open Source AI Guild.

Process for Open Source

This will contain a detailed process how to receive funding from Open Source AI Guild and how members of the guild should be evaluating various projects.