Re: SUO: RE: Cyc Upper Ontology offer
What is meant to be covered by "information" in the sentence "By
obtaining information, software, and/or documentation of the Upper
CYC(r)Ontology (collectively, "Material"), ..." ?
Mark Richards
----- Original Message -----
From: Doug Lenat <doug@cyc.com>
To: Horn, Graham <graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>
Cc: 'Doug Lenat' <doug@cyc.com>; <hovy@isi.edu>; <fritz@cyc.com>;
<lee@textwise.com>; Niles Teknowledge Ian (E-mail)
<iniles@teknowledge.com>; West R SSI-GREA-UK Matthew (E-mail)
<Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com>; Kent E. Robert (E-mail)
<rekent@ontologos.org>; <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 12:10
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: Cyc Upper Ontology offer
>
> Graham,
>
> The intent is not for Cycorp to claim credit for Aristotle's work,
> but rather to avoid a situation where someone runs some simple
> mechanical transformation of our axioms, producing a set of
> equivalent ones for which they then take credit. (Normal
> copyright protection does not protect against such "semantic"
> plaigarism, since the character-by-character appearance of
> the axioms would be different from the form in which we supplied
> them, even if all the "adapter" did was alter the names of the
> predicates and variables in some systematic manner.)
>
> Since we aren't asking for royalties or license fees, I expect
> there shouldn't be much objection to giving us the requested
> citation/acknowledgement. I'm sure you would expect the same
> in the reverse situation: i.e., you've written a corpus of 30,000
> axioms and some fellow scientist asks you for a copy, and you
> supply it, and they then adapt and built upon it for their
> work (academic or commercial); then surely in that situation
> it would be wrong for them not to credit your contribution.
>
> Regards,
> Doug
>
>
>
> At 04:13 PM 3/16/01 +1100, Horn, Graham wrote:
> ><snip> Notice that the agreement requires that any use of any
axioms which
> >are *logically equivalent* to any part of Cyc, even if translated
into any
> >other natural or artificial language, must be credited to Cycorp.
This means
> >that if one uses any part of the Cyc upper ontology and if they
also assert
> >that, say, every relation is a thing, or that spatial containment
is
> >transitive, then they must acknowledge that Cycorp owns the
copyright to
> >that assertion, even if it is made in, say, EPISTLE, or even in
English, and
> >even if they had said it before in other places; in fact, even if
Aristotle
> >had said it before. </snip>
> >
> >Wow!
> > . Maybe not so marvellous after all. I presume this means
> >there is at least considerable negotiations in front of us before
we can
> >even look at taking up Cyc.
> >
> > . I would suggest Cyc would get considerable advantage by
> >being adopted by the SUO. I would hope that would make it
attractive for
> >them to retract this condition. I presume the clause would be
totally
> >unacceptable to all of us, as well as the IEEE.
> >
> > . The offer did seem too good to be true. Maybe it was.
> >
> >
> >
> >Cheers Graham Horn
> >National Data Standards Unit
> >Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
> >================================================
> >Phone: 02.6244.1094
> >Fax: 02.6244.1199
> >Email: Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au <mailto:graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>
> >
> >
> =============================================================
> Dr. Douglas B. Lenat phone: 512-342-4001
> Cycorp, Suite 100 fax: 512-342-4040
> 3721 Executive Center Drive email: lenat@cyc.com
> Austin, TX 78731 web: <http://www.cyc.com>
> =============================================================