CGOL patterns as NFTs

[mniemiec]

1. The nft could be even a signature of a file.

"file" and "pattern" are two different things. E.g. there are many different ways of encoding a Life pattern into several different unique files (even within the same format). E.g. using different orientations, or different generations of an oscillator. Even if one settles on a format like .apg that disambiguates these, larger discoveries can be trivially altered by using different stators, different stabilizing still-lifes, etc. In CGOL terms, they're all functionally equivalent, yet in terms of bit patterns, they're unique. Which should be monetized? It can get even more complicated if you can include metadata in the file (e.g. viewing position). Two slightly different views of the same identical pattern would yield different files.

5, In my design the buyer is performing proof of ownership to the patterns.

Again, this is just proof that the pattern was mined from some soup. That doesn't prove that the pattern was not previously "owned" by some other means. One could establish unambiguous "ownership within the "CGOL-as-NFT" universe, but not within the "CGOL" universe. One runs into the same probem that happens elsewhere when the same basic set of names/identifiers are used in two similar but different namespaces. E.g. Steam is a popular game platform, but their web site is steampowered.com, because someone else owns steam.com; ICANN namespace is not the same as trademark namespace, even though there is heavy overlap.

Anyway the answer to most such question is - let the market decide. If it has value people will buy it.

Yes, but again, buy it from WHOM? If the CGOL-as-NFT universe is going to be distinct from the CGOL universe, why even bother with having CGOL as part of the equation at all? It can just confuse the issue.

Once again I will let the market decide this. My design provide opportunity for both. Composites by hands as well as those found in natural soups. If someone payed for a lot of electricity and iron to mine unique and rare CGOL patterns, I think he deserves some reward.

So, basically, let people who have big bucks take over and dominate a hobby that has been cultivated for decades by enthusiasts, just because they're rich? We've already seen this happen with some collectible markets, like video games.

The difference between fungible and non-fungible assets is that the values of the non-fungible ones are much more speculative and fluid. Prices of collectibles oscillate much more than values of currencies.

Would you buy a 3d design of such pattern? I mean someone did some work there to convert the ugly 2d pattern into 3d sculpt. So although you could do the work yourself, wouldn't you rather buy an existing 3d model?

Sure. I would pay for the blueprint (or possibly printed copy) of a 3D model - for what it's worth, not some price that is artificially inflated by artifically-created rarity. If I hang a Mona Lisa hanging on my wall, it's because I want to look at it, not because I want to impress all my friend that I have the only one in the world and spent half my fortune to prove it.

It can happen to any investment. This is why I think CGOL is unique, our patterns have value regardless of their market prices. And the mechanics of CGOL is mathematical, so we don't depend on some CEO who will create a new art. It's mathematical.

Patterns only have value to the community as a whole, not to people individually. Patterns are mathematical facts. You can't say "I have a glider gun, and I'll sell it to you for a loaf of bread". These act like copyrights (i.e. people can examine them, and prove that they're yours) rather than as trade secrets (that people can't see unless they pay you for them). They aren't like art, where people will hang them on their wall and admire them, and think that their $100K is well spent in that regard.

And if someone is stupid to throw his money on fake NFT patterns that worth nothing, then how is it differs from any other NFT market?

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Tulips have intrinsic value. Tokens do not.

If Mike Playle will mint some snarks and sell them and you will use them for your designs, then your designs would contain both - your patterns, and snarks minted by Mike. Thus adding some value to them. Mike could mint his snarks from glider bought from Conway if he would be alive and could mint gliders. Each component is made of lower components reaching down to basic SL components attributed to different miners attached to someone's wallet.

What if you need multiple snarks in a pattern? Do you have to wait for people to mint more, possibly at different prices? Blocks are commonly used. I can just imagine people flooding the blockchain with trillions of blocks, because even though they're dirt cheap, those micropennies do add up.

I mean let the market decide this question. You can always fail monetize anything if no one wants to buy your pattern.

Again, who decide who owns the pattern? In my example, Gosper found the gun (not a trivial achievement), yet Smith gets to monetize it because he found the soup - Gosper gets nothing. How is this a matter of "the market decides"? It's the mechanics that decide - NFTs are based on who mined a pattern, not who originally found it.

[apg]

To make my position on NFTs absolutely clear:

• Minting NFTs out of your own creations == absolutely fine!
• Minting NFTs out of someone else's creations == just not cricket.

All of the existing CA-related NFT projects that I've seen (NFTkey, Automatons, and those MNCA NFTs) are in the latter camp, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, the definition of your own creation can be fuzzy. If person A creates a fantastic new pattern, and person B reduces the stator by one cell, who owns the result? It's a bit similar to copyright on derivative works. Does A own it? Does B? Do each own a percentage, and if so, how much? It's not well defined.

Yes, exactly. Another phenomenon is when person A creates a partial and person B completes it: for example, both of the elementary knightships I completed (namely Sir Robin and Sir Sprayer) were based on partials found by other people (Tom Rokicki and Dylan Chen, respectively), and those partials account for more than half of the cells in the final pattern. Similarly, many new oscillators found this year were stabilisations by other people of partials found by hotdogPi. That's easy to solve in terms of LifeWiki attribution (just list all contributors) but less trivial when it comes to deciding who gets to mint the corresponding NFT: rightfully, it should require unanimous agreement from all discoverers of the pattern. That soon becomes infeasible for very large engineered patterns because they can transitively* contain the combined efforts of dozens of Lifenthusiasts.

*example: Gemini (Andrew Wade) contains many circulating gliders (Richard Guy) and construction arms (Paul Chapman, Dave Greene), which are in turn built from reflectors (Stephen Silver) and G-to-H devices (Paul Callahan) and various custom Herschel tracks (found by Hersrch, I imagine, for which we'll need to thank Karel Suhajda), all of which contain a variety of Herschel conduits (David Buckingham and Paul Callahan again) involving catalysts (and we'll need to credit both the discoverers of the still-lifes themselves and of the catalytic reactions, e.g. Bill Gosper discovering the eating reaction).

Some of the things here aren't even patterns (Hersrch is a program and the concept of a Herschel track is an idea) so they can't easily fit into this NFT framework anyway.

[simsim314]

Two slightly different views of the same identical pattern would yield different files.

The value of the pattern is not due to the uniqueness of the pattern. Two exact same patterns minted by different people or even by same person at different times, might have very different values. The value have several sources.

NFT = minted NFTs + mined patterns + locations + minter + mint time.
Mined NFT = stable/periodic/puffer/gun pattern after stabilization of 16x16 pattern base on: public key + index

Thus each NFT has several sources of value:
- miner of source patterns. Imagine buying glider from Conway
- minter of base NFTs. The one who has minted the patterns you use for your current mint
- the person who is minting the new pattern now
- the mint time. For example the time of discovery, or the time of winning POTY
- mining index (optional), the lower the index of mined component the value increase

This will mean that if someone has discovered the pattern he can publish his discovery as NFT, and the time of the discovery. This will be registered in the blockchain. This NFT will have a lot of value. If the same person want to mint exact same pattern in half a year it will have different value.

We as a smart contract writers and UI designers can design what is meaningful to the value of the pattern and what is not. Different views of the same pattern, the same rle - will not be different, will not be presented differently and thus will not constitute to the value of the NFT. To the contrary the minter and time of the minting will. Obviously if someone for some reason see a difference and want to pay an extra buck we can't stop him, but as rule of thumb we as the creators of the platform have a lot of say and control over this kind of stuff.

ICANN namespace is not the same as trademark namespace, even though there is heavy overlap.

I agree but the value people would like to pay for the wrong name, the value steam.com as a site has is way lower. You are completely missing the market component. If some artifact doesn't seems interesting to you and me, and all the community of buyers and sellers then - who cares someone minted some glider? I see no special reason to have such a worry. The value is defined by you - mniemiec if you see no additional value you will not pay additional price or will not pay any price. If someone else sees some value, he might pay - you can't stop people from committing transaction by mutual agreements. You can only guide the UI and explain in the documentation and create the consumption culture around it.

Yes, but again, buy it from WHOM? If the CGOL-as-NFT universe is going to be distinct from the CGOL universe, why even bother with having CGOL as part of the equation at all? It can just confuse the issue.

How would you suggest to monetize the CGOL research and discoveries? This extra step is needed to monetize the effort and work done by the community. People should not make good quality research work for free. You are more than welcome to suggest a better way to monetize CGOL research.

Sure. I would pay for the blueprint (or possibly printed copy) of a 3D model - for what it's worth, not some price that is artificially inflated by artifically-created rarity.

So you would rather have no access to a useful file and close the access to anyone who wants to use it without paying, in order to sponsor the creator who can be supported by opening completely the file for everyone for free through NFT culture? How is this a better deal, a better world, a better economical model?

Patterns are mathematical facts. You can't say "I have a glider gun, and I'll sell it to you for a loaf of bread".

Pattern per se is indeed mathematical fact. But the pattern minted on a blockchain is mathematical fact attached to transaction vault that is made to store value. The amount of dollars written in your bank account is also a mathematical digital number. No one cares about the mathematical number, everyone cares how big is the number in their bank account. How much they themselves own. Saying you can't sell me a glider gun minted on a blockchain for loaf of bread is exactly as saying you can't sell a loaf of bread of pieces of green paper, or worse - numbers written in some database of some bank. You can't make payment with just adding and substracting numbers. Numbers are mathematical facts.

What if you need multiple snarks in a pattern? Do you have to wait for people to mint more, possibly at different prices?

You don't have to wait for anyone to do anything. You can mine and mint everything by yourself. This will probably have different value than pattern minted by other people who has proven to already have value. This is completely robust and flexible system. It gives you lots of degrees of freedoms, you can do whatever you want - the only question is how much what you are doing is worth? Minting composite of existing patterns that already have been bought will probably have more value that's all.

Again, who decide who owns the pattern?

No one owns patterns - people own NFTs. If the creator created the NFT at the moment of publishing his discovery, then the NFT will have more economical value, proportional to the impact of the discovery. The free market will already decide what has more value and what less. People who buy and sell the NFTs will decide this.

Gosper gets nothing

Gosper can mint the NFT with his glider gun and people might prefer buying the NFT minted by Gosper over mined by Joe. People might prefer the other way around - this is the point of free market no one specific decides the value of things. The community and the culture decides this.

I don't remember is Gosper gun was eventually found in the soup? If so I don't think this pattern differs from very rare glider or spaceship. Although Gosper constructed it, mining it with your computer in my personal opinion has similar impact. No one will mine the caterpillar lets say. But if many people will agree with you, and no one will agree with me, you can always not buy Gosper gun mined by anyone, and it will have no value per se.

Here is link with different funny answers for "You cannot hang CryptoArt on your wall, why do you buy it?" - I liked, I can hang on my screen. You can hang on virtual wall in virtual room.

[simsim314]

but less trivial when it comes to deciding who gets to mint the corresponding NFT: rightfully, it should require unanimous agreement from all discoverers of the pattern. That soon becomes infeasible for very large engineered patterns because they can transitively* contain the combined efforts of dozens of Lifenthusiasts.

There are two solutions to this issue:

1. Adding ability to attribute the pattern to several owners/minters. They should probably agree on the percentile each one getting, as the minter gets some rewards for every transaction - they can also decide make it for free without any benefits. They all will need to sign the transaction each with his own private key.

2. If you all can't agree on the percentage or whatever - and this is legitimate case, then each individual can mint the same pattern for himself, and let the market decide the proportional value of the contribution.

Both of the solutions are valid - but the first will require a little bit work on the smart contract.

*example: Gemini (Andrew Wade) contains many circulating gliders (Richard Guy) and construction arms (Paul Chapman, Dave Greene), which are in turn built from reflectors (Stephen Silver) and G-to-H devices (Paul Callahan) and various custom Herschel tracks (found by Hersrch, I imagine, for which we'll need to thank Karel Suhajda), all of which contain a variety of Herschel conduits (David Buckingham and Paul Callahan again) involving catalysts (and we'll need to credit both the discoverers of the still-lifes themselves and of the catalytic reactions, e.g. Bill Gosper discovering the eating reaction).

Every participant is free to mint whatever he wants, but if you want to have a good quality NFT you might want to get glider gun minted by Gosper, Hershel track 50% minted by Hershel, conduits minted 50% by Paul and 50% by David. They all might want to mint their patterns, and you might want to incorporate patterns minted by them into your discovery NFT. More than that - you might want to mint discoveries with patterns minted during the discoveries of other patterns. You can also say - aah forget it, I will mine and mint everything on my own. This is completely up to you and your choice. You don't have to reflect attribution in your minted work, but you could if you would want to. The point is that you have a complete freedom to mint as you like. The market will evaluate the effort and the value enclosed in the minted pattern. I respect the culture of one to one attribution to NFT ownership percentile wise, but it's sometimes not clear. As I said there is always the solution you will mint everything from scratch as your own and take the chance the pattern will worth less. People will know to estimate your part of the contribution - in the price of the NFT. Probably NFTs minted by several discoverers all agreeing on the percentiles, will worth more to everyone over each individual minting on his own. Once again I'm not an oracle - I can provide tools and ideas, and let the market play with it. People are free to buy/sell/mint whatever they want. If no one buys some worthless NFT because someone decided to place several SLs and explode them with gliders, it's his problem. We should not to forbid people from minting whatever, we as a community should encourage rightful attribution of value to different patterns. BTW at first the prices could be very low, maybe several cents, the point of NFTs is that as more people buying and selling them on the market the whole market growth. It's about creating a trading culture more than creating monetization at first.

EDIT Another possible functionality is maybe combining two same patterns minted by two creators in percentile manner as the minter. So for example if you mint for 10% per transaction of the NFT to the owner, you can also attribute say 3% for creator A and 1% to creator B, and you will get the rest 6%. We need to work our this mechanics better I think. I would like to have the discussion moving to this practical direction of NFT mechanics. Maybe we can always agree that the transaction gives 1% to the minter. Then each level is getting 50% less per level. So the rightful minter gets 50% the rest 50% are divided between all minter of all the patterns he used in his creation recursively.

[pcallahan]

(My quote below was misattributed and I have since corrected it.)

Yes, but again, buy it from WHOM? If the CGOL-as-NFT universe is going to be distinct from the CGOL universe, why even bother with having CGOL as part of the equation at all? It can just confuse the issue.

I agree with this point, and maybe simsim314 has a response.

I'll grant that it would be great if people could fund their work on CGoL and have more time to do it. I'm skeptical that NFTs provide a way to do it, but suppose hypothetically they do. It still does not follow that these NFTs need to have anything to do with CGoL. An NFT connected to Katy Perry has her pop star status going for it. CGoL is pretty obscure by contrast. When it pops up intermittently in the NYT or SciAm it's exciting because there is any mass exposure at all. So we're up against two hurdles: acceptance of NFTs and acceptance of CGoL as something people want for an NFT.

You could make a "core competency" argument that CGoLers have to make CGoL-themed NFTs because that's what they know best. It seems a stretch, though. I'm sympathetic to the base problem: how do you find enough time to work on CGoL and also make a living for yourself. I don't think this is it.

Added: simsim314 mentioned chess players I think. In that case, there are still relatively few chess players who can make it into a career.

[hotdogPi]

As the discoverer of all those new oscillators, I think NFTs are a fad and will be gone in a few years. I also stay away entirely from cryptocurrency. I have no online money except for gift cards given to me for two websites. I even try to put my debit card on as few sites as possible due to possible leaks, and I physically pay cash at stores and restaurants whenever possible (which is almost all the time).

Every participant is free to mint whatever he wants

Please stop assuming everyone is male.

[mniemiec]

Thus each NFT has several sources of value: ...
- the mint time. For example the time of discovery, or the time of winning POTY

If the time is user-settable (e.g. time of discovery), it's subject to fraud. If it's not (i.e. always set to the time it's entered into the system), priority goes to who minted it first, not who discovered it first.

ICANN namespace is not the same as trademark namespace, even though there is heavy overlap.

Values in ICANN namespace are highly-contested commodities. This is why domain name speculators snap up shorter names to make huge profits by reselling them. The name "steam.com" appears to be for sale - and I'm pretty sure the reason why Steam didn't buy it is because whoever is parked on it is asking too high a price.

How would you suggest to monetize the CGOL research and discoveries? This extra step is needed to monetize the effort and work done by the community. People should not make good quality research work for free. You are more than welcome to suggest a better way to monetize CGOL research.

As has been pointed out several times, research is often a collaborative effort. Most discoveries build on earlier discoveries by others, and not all discoveries are patterns that can be represented as arrays of bits, and certainly most of them weren't found by random brute force searching. There isn't a really good way to divide up. It's not like cutting up a pizza; it's more like attempting to cut up a pot of soup. What will happen with monetizing patterns like this is that most of it will go to people who throw money at the problem, rather than those who spent years of their lives on it earlier. The hobby is literally being sold to the highest bidder.

So you would rather have no access to a useful file and close the access to anyone who wants to use it without paying, in order to sponsor the creator who can be supported by opening completely the file for everyone for free through NFT culture? How is this a better deal, a better world, a better economical model?

I didn't say "without paying". Creators can and should charge for useful work. I think it might be useful to pay for a 3D blueprint for a Ferrari. But I think it's a waste of money to pay a thousand times as much for a 3D blueprint of the guaranteed ONLY Ferrari in existence. NFTs create a product that is not useful in and of itself, but whose sole value is in its artificially-created rarity.

The amount of dollars written in your bank account is also a mathematical digital number. No one cares about the mathematical number, everyone cares how big is the number in their bank account.

And that is how fungible tokens, like cash, work. But NFTs are not JUST worth their values. They are unique, and specifically designed to be so; your NFT of a Mona Lisa and my NFT of a Ferrari are not equivalent, even if they sell for the same amount. Their values will go up and down differently as the market decides. If we both have hundred dollar bills with different serial numbers, that is not the case.

No one owns patterns - people own NFTs. If the creator created the NFT at the moment of publishing his discovery, then the NFT will have more economical value, proportional to the impact of the discovery. The free market will already decide what has more value and what less. People who buy and sell the NFTs will decide this.

That's fine for new discoveries, but what about the half century of CGOL discoveries from the past century, whose discoveries couldn't benefit from the NFT minting process, because it hadn't been invented yet?

I don't remember is Gosper gun was eventually found in the soup? If so I don't think this pattern differs from very rare glider or spaceship.

No. It was found by hand (possibly with some computer assist in running patterns to completion). Back in the early days of CGOL, computing resources were limited, so soup searching was not practical. In fact, many discoveries were done totally manually (e.g. with stones on a Go board).

Here is link with different funny answers for "You cannot hang CryptoArt on your wall, why do you buy it?" - I liked, I can hang on my screen. You can hang on virtual wall in virtual room.

Again, a JPG of a copy of Mona Lisa is just as pretty as a JPG of my own personal unique Mona Lisa. The only additional thing I get from the latter is bragging rights (that I have monetized).

2. If you all can't agree on the percentage or whatever - and this is legitimate case, then each individual can mint the same pattern for himself, and let the market decide the proportional value of the contribution.

Then the lion's share goes to whose work is perceived as most important, rather than who did most of the work. That's often the person who screwed the final bolt on the plane to make it fly. We end up with the Tesla vs. Edison issue - Tesla invented AC, but Edison monetized it.

Please stop assuming everyone is male.

To be strictly pedantic, English (and most European languages) use feminine pronouns to refer exclusively to feminine targets, while masculine pronouns refer to targets that are either masculine, or indeterminate, or of deliberately unspecified gender. I.e. women have their own exclusive pronouns, but men do not.

Yes, I know that there has been much discussion about "proper" pronouns in recent years. However, people who use "he" in a generic sense are not necessarily being sexist; they may just be being traditional or grammatically precise.

[apg]

Hershel track 50% minted by Hershel, conduits minted 50% by Paul and 50% by David. They all might want to mint their patterns

Herschel may have passed away roughly 150 years before Conway invented the Game of Life... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel

[Aleph]

How would you suggest to monetize the CGOL research and discoveries? This extra step is needed to monetize the effort and work done by the community. People should not make good quality research work for free. You are more than welcome to suggest a better way to monetize CGOL research.

As has been pointed out several times, research is often a collaborative effort. Most discoveries build on earlier discoveries by others, and not all discoveries are patterns that can be represented as arrays of bits, and certainly most of them weren't found by random brute force searching. There isn't a really good way to divide up. It's not like cutting up a pizza; it's more like attempting to cut up a pot of soup. What will happen with monetizing patterns like this is that most of it will go to people who throw money at the problem, rather than those who spent years of their lives on it earlier. The hobby is literally being sold to the highest bidder.

This. People will hide their partial patterns so they can mint their completed ones.

[pcallahan]

To be strictly pedantic, English (and most European languages) use feminine pronouns to refer exclusively to feminine targets, while masculine pronouns refer to targets that are either masculine, or indeterminate, or of deliberately unspecified gender. I.e. women have their own exclusive pronouns, but men do not.

Yes, I know that there has been much discussion about "proper" pronouns in recent years. However, people who use "he" in a generic sense are not necessarily being sexist; they may just be being traditional or grammatically precise.

Quibble: usage has shifted in just the past couple of decades, so I agree with hotdogPi, not that simsim314 was actually assuming males with "he" but that "he" is no longer the appropriate pronoun to use (even if the nuns drilled it into me that it was ). Singular "they" has long precedence and sounds natural in use. That would be my suggestion when gender is unknown. Similarly, "you" often sounds less stilted than "one" when referring to a non-specific individual, and "whom" often sounds stilted even if it's the object of a verb or preposition (plus, people who try to use it sometimes overcorrect). Language is ever-evolving and merely sticking to normative rules can create unintended perceptions.

My advice: give your living audience precedence over old books and your grammar school teachers.

I have been thinking more about the point that NFTs can literally be of anything, and are often easy to produce for digital work of no intrinsic value.

• Even if I were trying to make money with NFTs, I can't think of a reason to prefer CGoL patterns. Most of us here have a lot of coding experience and could make generative objects with more popular appeal (e.g. work on L-systems and generate digital flowers, kind of a virtual tulipmania; it might not catch on, but would be as likely as CGoL I think).
• Or lean directly on the collectibles market but with a "nerd-adjacent" twist. Comb the mathematics genealogy project for names of mathematicians who can be associated with photos and produce "mathematician trading cards" that could have one NFT per issue as well as limited editions of physical cards.

The above are kind of random, but seriously, I think that a brainstorming session on NFTs specifically would turn up better and less controversial sources for these digital objects than actual CGoL patterns.

That said, I really think it is a fad like beanie babies. Cryptocurrency already strikes me as a solution in search of a problem (or some problem other than money-laundering). NFTs just sound like a get-rich-quick scheme.

Finally, it's kind of fun to see an old school Usenet-style flamewar going on here. No hard feelings all around, I hope.

[AGreason]

1. In response to "how else to monetize CGOL" my suggestion would be "simply do not"

2. With regards to the high-end physical art market, yes, that is also largely run off of a combination of money laundering and grift, much like NFTs.

EDIT:

3. When opening with "this would need community buy-in to work" and then receiving uniformly negative feedback from the community, it seems as though the discussion could reasonably be closed at that point.

[simsim314]

Herschel may have passed away roughly 150 years before Conway invented the Game of Life.

I'm really not sure why they called Herschel tracks at all then.

Anyway back to my point. I'm trying to distinguish attribution and ownership. For example two discoverers can mint the same pattern twice as NFT each one independently from the other, so attribution will be written in LifeWiki to both of them - but as NFT you as a buyer need to see it as "You own just the NFT associated with the proportion done by the minter". If for example the minter's contribution is minor to the pattern, but he did something - and he minted it when the discovery was made, then probably his NFT will worth 10 times less than the NFT minted by the main discoverer. Ownership unlike attribution is probably inherited too, so if Hershcel's grand grand son, wants to mint NFT with Herschel tracks, maybe it has a value in a form of "back in time inheritance". Not sure - let the market decide. My main point is that this is new form of "ownership" which differs from "attribution". Herschel's grand grand son might mint a lot of Herschel tracks and sell them as a collection 100 cards. Or just one huge pattern with many tracks. Something like a huge oscillator based on many tracks. The buyer should grasp the concept that he is selling not the oscillators but contribution done his grand grandfather of this kind of technology in general. There is also point of someone who is not the inventor but who wrote some utility for Herschel tracks and promoted using them. I think dvgrn did a lot in this area. So maybe Dave can mint this huge NFT oscillator too. Or a collection of oscillators found by his utility.

I would say the main sticking point for most NFTs in general is to convince someone - the NFT worth anything at all.

I do like the idea that attribution and minting are correlated - but it doesn't has to be 1 to 1 correlation. The market's power is exactly to represent an abstract idea, and evaluate it based on buyers/sellers community preferences/priorities. All the mental work of evaluating the importance of the NFT, its value reflected in amount of attribution encapsulated in it - is up to the buyer/seller to do. You can always mint an NFT from parts mined by you, stating - I'm selling only my part of the contribution.

It still does not follow that these NFTs need to have anything to do with CGoL.

I don't have a problem with selling virtual art in general. Virtual art is a solved problem. People selling it for millions already. Would you prefer to sell cards of "CGOL discoverers" like basketball players do instead of patterns? I don't think it's a good idea. I don't see how this thread of thinking bringing something alternative and functional to the table. What exactly is your alternative suggestion? Lets assume NFTs work and able to generate value in format that not only life enthusiasts understand - i.e. prices. What do you suggest to sell in order to promote CGOL research? My idea is a bit complex but it promotes a lot of fields, soup search, glider constructions, composite patterns etc.

simsim314 mentioned chess players I think. In that case, there are still relatively few chess players who can make it into a career.

Way more than in CGOL. When there is money involved not only chess players can earn money. Chess teachers, chess organizers, chess sets all can be sold and profited from. More people play chess due to chess being so deeply rooted in the culture. So I think it's the dream or the goal for any intellectual community. Another reason why I choose chess and not physics research, is because physics is sponsored by establishment. It has very old and practical reasons to be part of the institutions - chess don't, it's a hobby without any practical usage. Chess profitability is existing outside of any institutional organization, it's a private initiative of people who like to play chess, nothing more. There is no bureaucracy there, no Olympic committee, no governmental regulation, there is no establishment at all. Only people who want to play chess and promote chess.

I'm skeptical that NFTs provide a way to do it

It's very real and practical format to do it. It's just several lines of code and few bucks, and you get established format of art monetization. It's the simplest and most straight path in my opinion. I'm completely open to alternatives - considering most of us are programming geeks, I see less potential in more traditional organization of events to attract attention. Such events are also probably less fitting to this collective of people. NFTs much more. The main problem with NFT is that many people think it's a hype - but it's a hype now, so we can ride the wave. We as a community don't have to stop the local hype if we would like the process just like we don't have to stop CGOL research just because everyone else moved to do something else. It could be natively integrated into the discovery publishing flow. This will also give a good feedback in form of actual value you gain for your discovery days after you publish the pattern. I think it's a good format and reasonable too.

CGoL is pretty obscure by contrast. When it pops up intermittently in the NYT or SciAm it's exciting because there is any mass exposure at all. So we're up against two hurdles: acceptance of NFTs and acceptance of CGoL as something people want for an NFT.

This is more probably OR operator than AND. i.e. people who like NFTs might want to buy CGOL NFTs and people who like CGOL might also buy CGOL NFTs. This is the only reason to have this in the first place. But I think we should start from appealing to people from CGOL community.

I think NFTs are a fad and will be gone in a few years. I also stay away entirely from cryptocurrency.

NFT hype will be gone - yes. But the top NFTs will remain for years and years to come. If you are not into cryptocurrency I think you are missing the opportunity of your lifetime, and completely oblivious to economical trends in general. Do you think the world is moving away or toward virtualization of property and currency? Do you think you will be able to pay cash at all in 100 years? This attachment to physical world is fading away.

Please stop assuming everyone is male.

I can address you as female if this is the case.

If the time is user-settable (e.g. time of discovery), it's subject to fraud. If it's not (i.e. always set to the time it's entered into the system), priority goes to who minted it first, not who discovered it first.

The minting time is not mutable, and decided by the blockchain at the moment of the minting.

No. priority goes to whoever the community decides to give the priority to. If you don't have this priority - there is no such priority. Market is not something living outside of people. If no one gives priority to this nuance, then there is no such priority at all. No one will buy a minted pattern just because someone random minted it before the discoverer. NFT = pattern + minter + minting time. If you missing the minter component, there is no value in the NFT.

rather than those who spent years of their lives on it earlier.

What stops them from minting their NFTs? If you think it's just that the money goes to them, then they can mint their NFT and you can pay them more. Money is only a projective of yours and other's subjective preferences. The value is established by the community, if many people will agree with you (and I agree), then people who spent years of their lives earlier can mint stuff and the stuff will actually worth more because of that. This is the minter factor in the NFT. In other words I would probably prefer to buy eater2 mined by calcyman or dvgrn than Gosper gun mined by Joe. NFT has no objective value only what people in the community are willing to pay for. If you want to pay more to the older members of the community, and like you many others - then the NFT value minted by them will increase. You don't attach value to patterns, you attach value to pattern + minter + minting time. I was trying to explain it before. If the minter factor is important then it will dominate the minted NFT more than the pattern itself. Maybe. This is exactly what markets for.

Values in ICANN namespace are highly-contested commodities. This is why domain name speculators snap up shorter names to make huge profits by reselling them. The name "steam.com" appears to be for sale - and I'm pretty sure the reason why Steam didn't buy it is because whoever is parked on it is asking too high a price.

I don't see how is this applicable to out case. Everyone can mint the same pattern, it's more like a painting anyone can put on the market to sell. You can draw the Mona-Lisa and post it on ebay. You can also post a poster of Mona-Lisa on ebay too. Maybe someone would like to buy a poster, but it's value will be much less than of the original painting.

Creators can and should charge for useful work.

Once again you promote the economical model that blocks everyone from using useful files for free, because you couldn't find a better way to justify economically effort done by the creator. NFTs are allowing both - money to the creator AND open source free useful files being used by anyone. If you use something and see value in it, you can support the creator by buying the NFT he sells of the pattern. It's the same as supporting the creator in patreon with some potential benefits for you as well. I don't see how closing the file and demanding money for using it is better economical model than NFT.

That's fine for new discoveries, but what about the half century of CGOL discoveries from the past century, whose discoveries couldn't benefit from the NFT minting process, because it hadn't been invented yet?

Probably people could mint whatever they want whenever they want - or we can create such events for the community to mint older patterns. There is no restriction on minting at all, but we could have a minting party to create some meaningful minting time to older patterns. Also if the older pattern is useful - then you can ask the discoverer to mint it for your new pattern. I wouldn't be bothered by older useful patterns, and old large creations - can be minted in a party indeed. This is up to us as a community, depending how much people would like the idea, and willing to engage. Nothing stops anyone to mint anything at any time.

People will hide their partial patterns so they can mint their completed ones.

Or they can mint their partial patterns - so that anyone else who has more time to complete the project would benefit them too. BTW many people hide their partial patterns during discovery today too - in order to post the completed pattern as a whole. I agree the NFT could change this dynamics but I would afraid people will mint too much of their work in progress and not less.

No. It was found by hand (possibly with some computer assist in running patterns to completion). Back in the early days of CGOL, computing resources were limited, so soup searching was not practical. In fact, many discoveries were done totally manually (e.g. with stones on a Go board).

Well then if Gosper will mint - probably many people will pay him more. As I said , NFT = pattern + minter. If you like Gosper's gun that he mint over Joe's mined, you can pay more.

And that is how fungible tokens, like cash, work. But NFTs are not JUST worth their values. They are unique, and specifically designed to be so; your NFT of a Mona Lisa and my NFT of a Ferrari are not equivalent, even if they sell for the same amount. Their values will go up and down differently as the market decides. If we both have hundred dollar bills with different serial numbers, that is not the case.

It doesn't matter the fact you can buy a loaf of bread with that - i.e. they store value. If the guy in the store will not sell you bread for NFT, then trade your NFT for dollars, and pay him in dollars. As long as you get the point that virtual NFT owned by you store value, you get my point.

Then the lion's share goes to whose work is perceived as most important, rather than who did most of the work. That's often the person who screwed the final bolt on the plane to make it fly. We end up with the Tesla vs. Edison issue - Tesla invented AC, but Edison monetized it.

How do you know what will be the price or the lion's share? There is no way for you to know that. You first assume that the price will be such - and then you say this is unfair. So maybe the price will not be unfair? Why would the price be unfair if you are the one who is deciding it? There is no external force deciding prices it's just the community of CGOL enthusiasts. At first at least.

NFTs can literally be of anything, and are often easy to produce for digital work of no intrinsic value.

This is true. You can mint whatever. The problem is to find community of people who are willing to participate in the trade. This is not a technical problem but a social one.

but would be as likely as CGoL I think

I'm not trying to monetize L-system research. If I would, I would probably go to L-system community and suggest them to mint their research as NFT.

"mathematician trading cards"

If you are going in that direction - please try to find existing project that we can seamlessly be part of. I don't think I want to get involved in this project in order to then have also our community cards as part of larger "mathematicians cards" NFTs. Because lots of chances this will not work. We have our community and common interest, why not start from that?

The above are kind of random, but seriously, I think that a brainstorming session on NFTs specifically would turn up better and less controversial sources for these digital objects than actual CGoL patterns.

I don't mind brainstorming. But my question is not - how to make money from NFTs? or just how to make money? My question is how to make money from CGOL research. If you can find already existing market of mathematical NFTs that we can join in, and they have some format that we need to comply to - I would agree that this is a better path. But just throwing NFT ideas - I don't think it's too productive. As I said you need a community, it's a social problem. You need to get people interested in trading your NFTs.

old school Usenet-style flamewar

"how else to monetize CGOL" my suggestion would be "simply do not"

Why not? Do you think CGOL research has no value? Do you think people should do valuable stuff for free? Do you think CGOL research is not real or not hard work? Do you think drawing or playing chess is more valuable than CGOL research? There is no reason to not monetize hard work done by community even if this was done for fun. If you care about CGOL at all - you can see the benefit of monetizing this research field.

With regards to the high-end physical art market, yes, that is also largely run off of a combination of money laundering and grift, much like NFTs.

So in your opinion is way more important to give the government your money than to support art and artists? When did taxes became the highest ethics?

[simsim314]

3. When opening with "this would need community buy-in to work" and then receiving uniformly negative feedback from the community, it seems as though the discussion could reasonably be closed at that point.

This is not uniformly negative. I also don't expect all the community to participate - I would compromise on several people who are actively making important discoveries. Many people who responded negatively didn't understand what is NFT at all, how they work, or made wrong assumption about my suggestion. This is why I'm engaged in the discussion - if most of the people were responding like you, I wouldn't bother.

[pcallahan]

I'm really not sure why they called Herschel tracks at all then.

From LifeWiki:

The term "Herschel" is attributed to John Conway, who very early in the history of Life investigated the fates of all polyominoes up to at least 7 bits [4]. The name is commonly ascribed to the Herschel heptomino's similarity to a planetary symbol ♄ erroneously attributed to Uranus (discovered by William Herschel in 1781.) However, in point of fact a Herschel closely resembles the symbol for Saturn, but bears no particular resemblance to either of the symbols used for Uranus. So the appropriate name might actually be "Huygens" -- but "Herschel" is now universally used by tradition.

I already knew it was the shape of the pentomino but I did not know the rest of it.

Anyway, I am not actively against CGoL NFTs, but I don't plan to be involved.

Added: On this point

This is more probably OR operator than AND. i.e. people who like NFTs might want to buy CGOL NFTs and people who like CGOL might also buy CGOL NFTs. This is the only reason to have this in the first place. But I think we should start from appealing to people from CGOL community.

I like your optimism, but I don't believe it. Someone who just wants to by an NFT is already faced with many choices and will probably stick to something they understand. People who like CGoL won't necessarily want a CGoL NFT. I mean, to be blunt, I have no use for such a thing. (As you're aware, I actually am kind of interested in physical CGoL "artwork" but I think that makes me a little weird. Most people like having patterns to run, modify, and use in other patterns.)

[AforAmpere]

Why not? Do you think CGOL research has no value? Do you think people should do valuable stuff for free? Do you think CGOL research is not real or not hard work? Do you think drawing or playing chess is more valuable than CGOL research? There is no reason to not monetize hard work done by community even if this was done for fun. If you care about CGOL at all - you can see the benefit of monetizing this research field.

There's a difference between value and monetary value. I think lots of the stuff here has value to many of us, but not in the same way that money does. I think if people come into the community looking to be paid for it, lots of the passion that people have on here will be missing from the newcomers, since they're less invested doing something for the field and more in what they can get out of it. I don't personally attach any monetary value to the work I've done here, regardless of how many hundreds of hours I've poured into CA (although some do reasonably, because of website hosting costs and other things, but I think that should be more community funded if it comes down to it). As for the NFTs, I think the fact that so many ones that have no intrinsic value other than they are rare items sell for obnoxiously high prices is more indicative of a problem with the way society attributes value to things in general, and I'm not a fan of encouraging or participating in that, much less here. It doesn't seem like that will have any benefit on the community in the way of actual development or progress, either. I don't personally care about getting money out of anything I do here, that's not why I've stuck around for the last 5 years. Turning a community's focus away from passion onto money is how you take the soul out of it, same reason why when companies get too big they suddenly stop going the consumer-oriented route and more towards the how-do-we-exploit-the-consumer-oriented route.

[mniemiec]

I'm really not sure why they called Herschel tracks at all then.

It's because they were originally B-heptomino tracks, but B heptominoes have an annoying habit of dropping a hard-to-remove block early on, and the heptomino it subsequenty produces is much more easy to work with. That heptomino is called a Herschel because it resembles the 'h'-like symbol that represents the planet Saturn (and not the 'H'-like symbol that represent Uranus, that Herschel actually discovered). So the name is somewhat of a misnomer.

let the market decide.

So, basically, scientific recognition is now reduced to a popularity contest? Perhaps we should add a swimsuit competition... (j/k)

I would say the main sticking point for most NFTs in general is to convince someone - the NFT worth anything at all.

Since they have no intrinsic value, it's basically selling the Emperor's New Clothes.

Would you prefer to sell cards of "CGOL discoverers" like basketball players do instead of patterns?

Cards that people can collect, especially new enthusiasts first learning about the hobby, are not a bad thing - but as commodities, not as collectibles. It's really annoying to be able to collect "the whole set, except for one rare card whose price is ludicrous because the creator made it artificially expensive". Such practices show that the purpose of creating such cards is NOT to further the hobby, but solely to generate revenue by milking gullible hobbyists.

The minting time is not mutable, and decided by the blockchain at the moment of the minting.

So you CAN'T assign the time of "discovery" then; only a time of minting. This discounts priority of discoveries made by hand, and even ones made by searching any soups that aren't NFT-connected soups.

What stops them from minting their NFTs?

Nothing, but just because someone creates an NFT market, that doesn't mean that suddenly everyone in the CGOL world will suddenly jump on the bandwagon and mint every single discovery they have made in the past 50 years. But if they don't, somebody else who jumps the gun will beat them to it instead, and win priority. It's like the land rush that happens the instant ICANN opens up a new TLD - people rush in like lemmings to squat on all the choice names, in hopes that the people to whom those names actually refer hadn't gotten there first.

Once again you promote the economical model that blocks everyone from using useful files for free, because you couldn't find a better way to justify economically effort done by the creator.

I didn't mean to imply that. I meant that creators had the right to charge reasonable fees for their work, and reasonable fees for copies. Deliberately creating artificial scarcity just to drive up prices isn't that reasonable.

People will hide their partial patterns so they can mint their completed ones.

Or they can mint their partial patterns - so that anyone else who has more time to complete the project would benefit them too.

But if there's a financial incentive involved, many people would rather hide their discoveries, in hopes that they could complete them themselves, and reap the full benefits. This would return us back to the bad old days when scientific discoveries were jealously-guarded trade secrets.

It doesn't matter the fact you can buy a loaf of bread with that - i.e. they store value. If the guy in the store will not sell you bread for NFT, then trade your NFT for dollars, and pay him in dollars. As long as you get the point that virtual NFT owned by you store value, you get my point.

My point is that NFTs have no intrinsic value. The only reason people will be willing to trade dollars for them is if they impute a value to them - something that is basically just artificial hype. This is totally unlike commodities like bread or even gold, that have some intrinsic values even if people aren't willing to speculate on them.

Then the lion's share goes to whose work is perceived as most important, rather than who did most of the work. That's often the person who screwed the final bolt on the plane to make it fly. We end up with the Tesla vs. Edison issue - Tesla invented AC, but Edison monetized it.

How do you know what will be the price or the lion's share? There is no way for you to know that.

You're right, there isn't. There's also no way to assure that any split will be fair either. And history has shown us that the Edisons of the world get richer than the Teslas most of the time, because they have better publicity.

"how else to monetize CGOL" my suggestion would be "simply do not"

Agreed!

Why not? Do you think CGOL research has no value?

Yes, but this doesn't monetize research; it monetizes pretty pictures and hype, and the amount of monetization is not proportional to the research done, but rather, to subjective whims of those who buy the NFTs. Spending decades understanding how Life rules work, and constructing patterns based on that understanding is hard work. Spending a few $K on a computer that can spit out soups on demand is not.

So in your opinion is way more important to give the government your money than to support art and artists? When did taxes became the highest ethics?

Governments use money to create and maintain infrastructure, like roads. Money spent on NFTs produces zero tangible benefit for anyone, except profit for those who speculate on the market, and brokers who take their cuts off such speculation.

[simsim314]

but not in the same way that money does.

This is because money culture is corrupted today. Everything that has any form of value - has monetary value. But people are used to pay for some stuff and get other stuff for free. mniemic said he doesn't mind to pay artists for cg art, but he would still get used to getting CGOL patterns for free - although some of them involved much more effort, for some reason people assume those should be distributed for free and open to everyone. This is simply hypocritical. Refusing using NFTs as an alternative that supports open source monetization is completely irrational in this sense.

I think if people come into the community looking to be paid for it, lots of the passion that people have on here will be missing from the newcomers, since they're less invested doing something for the field and more in what they can get out of it.

Well this is a valid concern - but there was no field in history that lost from monetization. This will allow many existing contributors to focus more on their work, this will also attract new talents that might see in CGOL more than some obscure hobby. I agree there is a "romantic note" to projects and fields operating on free basis. But I disagree that their monetization harmed the field in the long run. Yes it could bring more corruption, politics, personal interests into the field this is true. But in the total cost of cons/pros no monetization did more harm than good to any field, attracting many new bright minds.

As for the NFTs, I think the fact that so many ones that have no intrinsic value other than they are rare items sell for obnoxiously high prices is more indicative of a problem with the way society attributes value to things in general,

As I mention in the discussion with mniemic, NTF is reflecting a community priorities. If our community will not be obnoxious with selling no intrinsic value NTFs for high prices, but will encourage pricings expressing the contributor's impact - there is no reason it will not remain the same further down the line. NFT is technology like any other technology, saying that people are using it wrong and therefore our community should not use it, is like saying people are using knifes to kill each other this is why we should prepare all our food by hands. The same technology might have several usages, and several communities will treat NFTs their are creating very differently.

It doesn't seem like that will have any benefit on the community in the way of actual development or progress, either.

Why?

Turning a community's focus away from passion onto money is how you take the soul out of it, same reason why when companies get too big they suddenly stop going the consumer-oriented route and more towards the how-do-we-exploit-the-consumer-oriented route.

As I said once the field gets monetization it becomes made from professionals. People who are making it their profession tend to generate much higher quality research and results over people who are doing it for hobby. Chess, music, philosophy all started as hobby. But the real geniuses came when the field became occupied with people who are doing it full time. I don't think chess players are less passionate about chess today then150 years ago when most of them played for fun only. I don't think musicians are enjoying music less because they are being payed. If something then people who are doing it, will continue doing it mainly because they love it, but to the contrary of what is the state of things today, they will be able not to be forced to do anything else - because they need money and profession and some other source of income.

[simsim314]

in hopes that the people to whom those names actually refer hadn't gotten there first.

Then don't buy such NFTs. There is no competition of the sort.

So, basically, scientific recognition is now reduced to a popularity contest?

How do you think scientific impact is established today?

Since they have no intrinsic value

Does numbers in your bank account have intrinsic value?

This discounts priority of discoveries made by hand

The market decides the priority no one else. You don't get priority in a way that you imagine. If you mniemiec don't think it should get priority, and the community agrees with you - it will not get such priority.

I meant that creators had the right to charge reasonable fees for their work

Maybe I should publish a new CGOL discovery selling it to everyone who wants to see it or use it, and sue anyone who is using it without my explicit personal permission. This creates way better culture I think. We should use this great monetization model! My next CGOL discovery - I will sell.

and reap the full benefits.

They can mint the discovery too - thus getting the lion's share of the full and finished pattern, proportional to their effort. Even sometimes maybe more.

This is totally unlike commodities like bread or even gold, that have some intrinsic values

Dollars are just numbers printed by the US government.

Agreed!

Well you can't tell me not to sell my hard work. Want to not sell yours? be my guest. I'm selling mine. No CGOL pattern for you today.

the amount of monetization is not proportional to the research done, but rather, to subjective whims of those who buy the NFTs.

How exactly did you established that? If you and me are the ones who are buying and selling the NFTs why would you buy and sell them by some random whims, and not by their contribution or other things you value in them? You are creating this illusion of "market" that someone else is participating in. Markets are reflection of community values nothing else. Not whims of some random dudes that do random stuff. They can do it as they wish - how is this bounding you in any form to comply yourself with this behavior?

Money spent on NFTs produces zero tangible benefit for anyone

They help support the artists and create a community around CGOL research and discoveries, thus promoting this field of research. If you see any value in CGOL research, then NFTs will create tangible benefit for popularizing and promoting it. The same value has paying the creators for their hard work.

[pcallahan]

That's often the person who screwed the final bolt on the plane to make it fly. We end up with the Tesla vs. Edison issue - Tesla invented AC, but Edison monetized it. ... And history has shown us that the Edisons of the world get richer than the Teslas most of the time, because they have better publicity.

Sidetrack, but Tesla was quite a celebrity in his day, hobnobbed with people like Mark Twain, and knew how to be a showman. I think it's safe to say Edison* had better business skills and more consistent follow-through. Tesla was right about alternating current, but it took Westinghouse to push that. Tesla had other ideas about electricity that were idiosyncratic and did not even match the best physics of the day. I read a biography a few years ago, probably this one.

To segue back to marketability, Kenneth Strickfaden was famous in movie circles as the creator of special effects for Frankenstein and similar movies. The classic "mad scientist's laboratory" is something we would not have without him. I can't find a reference, but I believe he started out with Tesla's actual equipment and extended it to suit his purposes. Tesla's vision was transmitting power without wires, but he never go it to work. Strickfaden at least found a market in pure spectacle. I am not sure where I'm going with this. You'd think Tesla could have enriched himself by turning his attention to entertainment, but that wasn't what he was trying to do. (Maybe there's a lesson in that.)

*And not to discount Edison as a prolific inventor. He came up with things people never even think about, like a nickel-iron rechargeable battery that is still in use today and may even gain traction for off-the-grid solar storage. It's bulky and inefficient, but also cheap, durable, and less toxic than alternatives. I forget where I read about it, but like many things, he came up with it just by trying many possibilities systematically. (Apparently, not the first either but the other work was not known in the US until much later.)

Added:

but there was no field in history that lost from monetization.

I don't think that's true. But it may depend on what you mean by "lost". The emphasis shifts. E.g., my favorite films are probably from around the late 50s through late 70s. There was experimentation with realistic acting styles and cinematography. Could a movie like Cool Hand Luke (1967) even be made today? These were, of course, commercial films, but there was probably less of a science to figuring out what would sell. (Update: this roughly corresponds to "New Hollywood"). Today, the biggest budgets and seriously, the best acting talent, goes to MCU movies. I like comic book superheroes as much as anybody, but I don't like it when that's all there is. There needs to be a balance where creative people can support themselves following their passion, but where profitability is not the driver. That will make some people very rich, but will not improve the "field" in creative output.

[mniemiec]

This is because money culture is corrupted today. Everything that has any form of value - has monetary value. But people are used to pay for some stuff and get other stuff for free. mniemic said he doesn't mind to pay artists for cg art, but he would still get used to getting CGOL patterns for free - although some of them involved much more effort, for some reason people assume those should be distributed for free and open to everyone. This is simply hypocritical. Refusing using NFTs as an alternative that supports open source monetization is completely irrational in this sense.

The CGOL community started as a collaborative effort, not a money-making one. Everybody involved contributed their time and effort for tree, and used the discoveries of other for tree to build on. (With the possible exception of Robert Wainwright, who published the fan newsletter Lifeline, for which he charged - but that charge was for the printing and distribution, not for the contents themselves). Is it hypocrisy for me to have spent literally thousands of hours making discoveries, and painstakingly cataloguing the discoveries of others and making that information freely available, to not expect to have to pay for the privilege?

Well this is a valid concern - but there was no field in history that lost from monetization.

Look at the video game industry. In its early days, it was possible for a single developer to create a quality video game, as an act of love, sometimes monetized, sometimes not. Even today, there are fan games that are not monetized. Contrast that with how major video games are made today. The days of the single developer are long past. Major games are now developed by huge corporations, with staffs of hundreds (who are often overworked and underpaid). The games are bundled with draconic DRM that makes it difficult to enjoy even games you paid for without having a constant internet connection and active account in good standing, and the companies can revoke your account (and the access to all your purchased games) at any time, for any reason that they determine violates their terms of service. They can also choose to cancel support for a game at any time. I.e. the game you spent a lot of money on, and invested a lot of time in, is not yours in perpetuity; they can turn into bricks after a few years when the company decides to shut off their servers, because not enough people are continuing to buy the game. Also, many games today live on microtransactions - they deliberately make play difficult and tedious to incentivize players to play money to make them less difficult and tedious. These tactics benefit game company shareholders at the expense of actual players and hobbyists. I would hate to see such a toxic dynamic overtake CGOL.

This will allow many existing contributors to focus more on their work, this will also attract new talents that might see in CGOL more than some obscure hobby.

A better way to do this would be how open source software works: company patrons fund software development, allowing developers to create quality software, that is then available for others to use, sometimes for free, sometimes not, but profit is not the motive.

Does numbers in your bank account have intrinsic value?

No, but banks (in the U.S. at least) are insured by the FDIC, and government currency is backed by the government. For money to lose its imputed value would literally take governmental collapse (at which point one would have much bigger problems). That is not the case with commodities markets, especially with collectibles that have no intrinsic values themselves; we see collectible bubbles bursting all the time.

The market decides the priority no one else. You don't get priority in a way that you imagine. If you mniemiec don't think it should get priority, and the community agrees with you - it will not get such priority.

Again, it comes down to a popularity contest. If someone painstakingly finds a discovery, but somebody else popularizes it, the second person reaps all the rewards of the first person's work, just because they have better publicists (Tesla vs. Edison all over again).

Would you like to work at a company where your compensation is determined by solely popular vote? Where the cutest and most gregarious employees get paid the most, just because people like them the most? I certainly would not.

This is totally unlike commodities like bread or even gold, that have some intrinsic values

Dollars are just numbers printed by the US government.

I didn't say dollars. I said gold, which has chemical and industrial uses, above and beyond its use as a currency standard.

How exactly did you established that? If you and me are the ones who are buying and selling the NFTs why would you buy and sell them by some random whims, and not by their contribution or other things you value in them? You are creating this illusion of "market" that someone else is participating in. Markets are reflection of community values nothing else. Not whims of some random dudes that do random stuff. They can do it as they wish - how is this bounding you in any form to comply yourself with this behavior?

Once something becomes a collectible and a tradable commodity, the "community" can become overrun with people who have zero interest in the hobby itself, but whose only interest is in monetizing it. We have seen this time and time again with other collectible markets.

We are even seeing it in the real estate market; in many places, where there are housing shortages, new housing is built - and then immediately snapped up by speculators, so people who actually need housing are priced out of the market, and then forced to rent from those speculators at grossly inflated rates.

[pcallahan]

Just a comment about the way value is assigned and the likely success of NFTs for this community (independent of whether we want them). The fact that Katy Perry can sell NFTs has no bearing and I'm inclined to think it supports the case against. I have nothing against Perry. I don't know her work well. Her "Last Friday Night" video (from some years back) is hilarious, and that's my whole exposure.

If I have a pair of running shoes that I've worn out after a year of use, there is little I can do with them but throw them away. If Katy Perry has a pair of worn out shoes, I'll assume she does this as well. But if she wanted to, she could autograph them, add a little card to demonstrate provenance, and gift them to a fan who would be absolutely overjoyed to receive such a treasure. If they were careful, they'd keep this souvenir under lock and key. If they were greedy or in need of cash, they might try to sell it. 50 years from now, it would fetch a price at auction that would at least be higher than other pairs of circa 2021 worn out running shoes (assuming Perry is still known and provenance is established). If she did this with all her old belongings, she'd flood the market and lower the value (but her fans might still be overjoyed).

Anyway, the point is I am not Katy Perry. Nobody here is Katy Perry. It is terrible strategy to enter a game in which other people are simply playing by a different rule book.

Update: On this point

The CGOL community started as a collaborative effort, not a money-making one. Everybody involved contributed their time and effort for tree, and used the discoveries of other for tree to build on.

This is not really "doing stuff for free". It's a reciprocity system. When we put work out and others extend it, both parties benefit. I remember posting discoveries to the mailing list years back, unsure what they might be good for, and being excited to see them used (often in a gun design by the late Dieter Leithner). That was the payment I received. Reciprocity has the "free rider problem" potentially, but this can also be dealt with. I don't think anyone here is worried about "free riders" who merely enjoy CGoL contributions passively. They're the main audience. If someone were to try to monetize our work without permission, or otherwise claim credit, that would be offensive. In practice, it doesn't seem to be a problem.

If we were licensing our contributions and requiring even nominal payments, that would be a huge barrier, not least to those of us who got into this as students with very little disposable income.

[simsim314]

Nobody here is Katy Perry.

CGOL itself is way more valuable. The research of the community as a whole - has way more value than any art done by Katy Perry. You can see this place as CGOL fans. Or more broadly CA fans.

As I understand - people would prefer just buying proprietary licensed CGOL patterns with very strict copyrights restrictions instead of NFTs. It's very easy to arrange. I have several discoveries out of my sleeve I can sell this way. And unlike NFTs that require a community support, solving open problems and then attaching proprietary commercial license to them, I can do myself without asking anyone's cooperation. Hopefully I will manage to find some important patterns that will have enough value to force the whole community to use this proprietary license, as they would not be able to publish their findings based on mine for free, without violating copyrights law. Maybe this approach will make more sense why we need to use NFTs instead of close sourcing everything with commercial license. Technically speaking selling my work with commercial license is way easier monetization strategy.

[pcallahan]

As I understand - people would prefer just buying proprietary licensed CGOL patterns with very strict copyrights restrictions instead of NFTs. It's very easy to arrange.

I think a lot of people would prefer going on a reciprocity system (as I noted in an update to my last post).

has way more value than any art done by Katy Perry.

But you missed or simply ignored my point. In a celebrity-dominated market, Katy Perry's old running shoes have more value than, say, the Gemini Replicator. I mean the latter is obviously of greater intrinsic value (Ms. Perry would probably even agree), but try getting the market to see it. You are entering a game in which other people play by different and privileged rules.

[simsim314]

I think a lot of people would prefer going on a reciprocity system (as I noted in an update to my last post).

I have no problem buying other's work too. As long as they pay me my share for using my patterns.

EDIT You can't tell me not to sell my work and not to attach commercial license to my findings - this is basic intellectual property rights. And you can't publish for free any pattern based on commercial license, this would be a violation of copyrights.

To be clear I'm totally against commercial licensing, especially for CGOL patterns - but I think people here don't appreciate the amount of work done by the community completely for free. This is harming the field as a whole. This is the simplest and most strict monetization strategy I'm trying to avoid, but seems no one cares.

[simsim314]

but try getting the market to see it. You are entering a game in which other people play by different and privileged rules.

This what I'm trying to start doing - and everyone seems to ignore even the need of such an attempt (except you and Adam who see the base of my logic). The rules are not different - I can sell Gemini if I would want to (I mean Remini which I discovered, Andrew could sell Gemini), and it can have the same copyrights as Katy Perry work. NFTs would probably in the long run be even more profitable than commercial license, I hope people will see the need in them, once too many patterns will become close sourced and sold with commercial proprietary strict license.

My basic point is that any research field is a tree of discoveries - and as discoveries are also an artistic work, they can be sold in digital art markets with strict licensing. At the point even few very basic patterns will have such license it will cause the whole tree based on it to collapse into the same strict license. This is very bad for the community that used to discover patterns and share them for free. I hope people would see how bad this monetization strategy is, used as gold standard in the whole digital art industry. The only alternative to this awful copyright restrictions laws that I know of is - NFTs. The reason people support this kind of licensing is due to the claim "every artist can demand to be payed for his work". I can't see any difference why I should publish my work for free as well. And to be clear is not about me personally, I think this is harming the field as a whole, not being appreciated because everything here is published for free, and as everything is free it's done only by hobbyist and not professionals dedicating they whole time to it. You are welcome to disagree, but not welcome to violate my copyrights.