Business: Crowdsourcing
Halfmakery   (+4)  [vote for, against]
A place, where you can execute your half-baked ideas indie style, similar how we discuss them in Halfbakery.

If you've got an idea which you want to work on by crowd-funding it, but don't want to go into creating fancy presentations and videos for the general population for a kickstarter, you go to Half[b]akery, discuss it, right?

Half[m]akery would be the place, where, if the idea seems promissing after such discussion, you take it further:

- Assume an approach to realizing it (e.g., a "Project") - Add milestones to the approach - Then, anyone can add tasks to them - and anyone can add attempts (proofs of work) to these tasks.

On every level (approach, milestone, task, attempt) there are annotations available. However, in order to add them, a user must enter a valid txid of a financial transaction (such as bank or bitcoin) directed to other another user in the system, which they can do by looking at the accounts or addresses available on each user's profile.

At first, Half[m]akery would have only the categories and subcategories of Halfbakery, without any ideas. These categories and subcategories would be controlled by the site administrators of Halfmakery. However, any user would have a right to add one's own "Approach classifier" (Idea) for a non-zero fee, directed to any staff member.

Half[m]akery idea itself and its approach to would be an open source project, fully transparent, and open for everyone's participation to improve it, or forking, etc.

The main purpose of having Half[m]akery would be:

- creating opportunities to live from working on the ideas you want
- to be able to start working and getting paid for working on new ideas
- to enable mankind to try out more of the variety of ideas we have
- to collect the open know-how and enable everyone to learn from
- be able to begin to solve, and to solve lots of problems of mankind.

Halfmakery is half-made. I need someone for testing, and feedback .
I'd give you bitcoins, so we could play with it. :)

# At this moment, the following things are available:
- Adding/Deleting user's own BTC/LTC addresses.
- Adding/Deleting/Editing an Approach.
- Adding/Deleting/Editing a Category.
- Adding/Deleting/Editing a Subcategory.
- Adding/Deleting an Idea with a valid txid to a staff user BTC address at www.halfmakery.com/staff . After deleting an idea, the txid, you can reuse it to add a different Idea.
- Adding/Deleting/Editing a Milestone.
- Moving Milestones around with Drag-and-Drop.
- Adding/Deleting an Approach level Comment with a valid txid to any another user of the system.
- Adding/Editing/Deleting a Task.
- Adding/Editing/Deleting an Attempt.

Deeper level comments should not require a txid at this time. After deleting a comment, the txid used becomes usable again.

[Inspired by Halfbakery]
-- Mindey, Aug 04 2014

Halfmakery http://www.halfmakery.com
[Mindey, Aug 04 2014, last modified Sep 12 2019]

Github https://github.com/...kery/commits/master
I started from a clean Django 1.4 configuration in OpenShift. [Mindey, Aug 04 2014]

Approach http://www.halfmakery.com/approach/8
This is an <example> of approach for Halfmakery. [Mindey, Aug 05 2014, last modified Sep 12 2019]

(?) "Good people and bad people" http://www.extenuat.../disc/quotesgg.html
Bottom of the page. [8th of 7, Aug 10 2014]

The "Need an account" link doesnt seem to work.
-- JesusHChrist, Aug 04 2014


Try /accounts/register/
-- Mindey, Aug 04 2014


If this thing contains commercially viable ideas and business plans, where does ownership of the intellectual property lie and how is this protected?

(//curing incurable diseases// - incurable diseases can't be cured)
-- hippo, Aug 04 2014


Approaches already have a "goal" field, where you can define the goal of an approach. Goals of an activity can be varied: 'having a mass production system', 'explore a possibility'.

For the approaches with the goal of having a production system with subscription resulting in services, products, hardware, etc. for masses, I plan for potential ownership, and integration with the virtual stock markets based on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

For the approaches with the exploratory goals, there will be no potential ownership, because all what results, will be essentially knowledge, and in this system, it will be open to everyone, with the hope that people will very quickly pick up the patterns of creation, and our productivity will grow much faster this way, rather than it would in the case of restricting knowledge.

(// incurable // -> currently incruable, but generally curable. Omitted that sentence. It's non-essential.)
-- Mindey, Aug 04 2014


//no potential ownership// - so no restrictions on people taking ideas from the site and going off and making money from them elsewhere, and no incentive for people to post useful or constructive ideas because they will have no protection?
-- hippo, Aug 04 2014


[hippo], sort of yes. Ownership could only be defined in terms of rights within a system. For example, in Halfbakery you own your ideas in the sense of having your rights to delete, edit your ideas. However, requesting to grant the rights globally in the global society is not realistic. Once you have released the ideas, you cease to own them (in the sense of controlling who uses them for what). So, I'd suggest defining the ownership in a similar way -- in terms of correct rights within the system, and in terms of rights in using the byproducts of the activities, revenue flows within a legal system. I think rights to the content created could be legally formalized by providing an option for an approach to utilize a particular license, like collective commons, attribution-alike, or something else. However, I don't think would be necessary. Halfbakery would not be as fun, if we would have to explicitly choose what license we use upon posting an idea...
-- Mindey, Aug 04 2014


My activation key was invalid for some reason.
-- RayfordSteele, Aug 04 2014


[RayfordSteele], I just changed the password for you, and sent it to your provided e-mail. I'll look into this issue.

The site is running on RedHat Cloud (running on Amazon), and I wrote it with Django. All commits were in Git repo. I'll try to export the repo, and publish it.

UPD.: Done so, see link to Github.
-- Mindey, Aug 04 2014


So, it's a competitor to the Halfbakery which charges you to post and annotate? Have I got that right?
-- pocmloc, Aug 05 2014


...and it wants you to post and annotate stuff which is more 'commercial' than what you see on the Halfbakery, with no additional protections on your intellectual property.
-- hippo, Aug 05 2014


How could anything be less “commercial” than the ideas I post on here? It's only because I am such a philatelist that I put them here rather than selling them for millions of BTC to venture capitalists.
-- pocmloc, Aug 05 2014


// So, it's a competitor to the Halfbakery which charges you to post and annotate? Have I got that right? //

[pocmloc], not a competitor. A complementary. Halfbakery is good at what it is for: discussing the ideas. It is not intended for financing them, nor for working on any particular approach. I was trying to make Halfmakery do what Halfbakery doesn't and was not intended for.

A single idea of Halfbakery could give birth to a large number of approaches in Halfmakery, because each approach depends on the unique skills and abilities, location and resources of the attemptor. Halfmakery primarily deals with Approaches, not Ideas.
-- Mindey, Aug 05 2014


[hippo], you can fork it, and make a version that protects it in a way that you like.
-- Mindey, Aug 05 2014


[JesusHChrist], [pocmloc], you had both added ideas, whereas you were supposed to add approaches.

It's supposed for adding an approach to an existing idea, not for creating a new idea.

Choose Category: Subcategory: Idea, and then add your Approach.
-- Mindey, Aug 08 2014


Not commenting on the idea itself, but I'm not sure calling it the "Halfmakery" is a great idea - it sort of leans heavily on the "Halfbakery". I'd be comfortabler if it had a less derivative name.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 08 2014


Don't want to be making a halfmockery.

I do love the idea of a collaborative halfbakery resource pooled idea being produced though. If I don't miss my bet there have been several smaller groups of halfbakers collaborate on launching inventions, but none of these have been open to the group as a whole.

That would be cool, but it would need to take place over personal email rather than on a public site.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 08 2014


// Don't want to be making a halfmockery. //

Me neither. By naming it "-makery" rather than "-bakery", I wanted to emphasize opposing goals of the two sites. Although both words "make" and "bake" imply creating, the word "bake" implies creating by increasing degrees of freedom (e.g., mixing dough), whereas the word "make" implies creating by decreasing degrees of freedom (e.g., affixing a handle to a spade), and since the intent of Halfmakery would be to facilitate incomplete attempts of making things, the prefix "Half" also seemed reasonable.

// I do love the idea of a collaborative halfbakery resource pooled idea being produced though. //

Me too! Well, I thought bringing ideation enthusiasts and cryptocurrency enthusiasts to finance ideas might work.

// That would be cool, but it would need to take place over personal email rather than on a public site. //

But people who would like to finance, would expect to see the results (proof of work), and if we're talking about crowd-funding, then it's the public that would want to see the results...
-- Mindey, Aug 09 2014


hmm, yes.

Any truly good, unprotected idea placed on a public website is a gonner unless it's such small potatoes that it's not worth ripping off.
How to overcome the intellectual property issues?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 09 2014


//How to overcome the intellectual property issues?// File before posting.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 09 2014


bake" implies creating by increasing degrees of freedom (e.g., mixing dough), whereas the word "make" implies creating by decreasing degrees of freedom

I see what you're saying there but I don't think that stands up after just momentary analysis. If someone differentiates baking a cake and making a cake by degrees of freedom then baking means improvising from scratch and making means using a recipe. The problem is that even though those things correspond in your degrees of freedom scale,the words by definition mean something else. Making a cake would include everything from improvising from scratch and using a recipe, and baking would mean putting it in the oven. That's the true differential meaning scale, rather than the one you have proposed that making and baking differ by increasing or decreasing of freedom. So halfmakery actually means doing less (fewer steps in process) than halfbakery rather than doing anything with less freedom than halfbakery. This is because halfbaked can include halfmakery (as an idea), but halfmakery can not include halfbaked where the object or idea is entirely made at point of submission. That's instead of saying halfmakery is halfbaked idea, but makery has no scaleable connection to bakery, except in the case where they mean the same thing when they are 1:1. So you would be more correct to say your website is meant to imply the idea is not yet finished at point of submission, wheres the halfbakery is that perhaps the idea is not intended to be completed, but alas hasbeen put in an 'oven' of sorts completing the metaphoria. In all you're proposing a website where the user has less freedom (presumes to make work), and confounds the meaning of making with being less free, in an attempt to encapsulate the user in the ethos of halfbakery by making it its less free opposite.
-- rcarty, Aug 09 2014


//How to overcome the intellectual property issues?//
//File before posting//

but... that's the problem.

Hypothetically, say you've got an awesome idea which requires several patents and you'd like to either crowd source the construction or licence the idea to an industry which can afford to run with it.

So you file for a Utility patent. It's relatively cheap, but it only buys the inventor one year to flog the invention.

What is in place to keep anyone from simply waiting out the year and stealing the concept knowing that the inventor can not afford to patent?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 09 2014


OK well sorry, but I didn't understand what an "approach" might be and I also didn't understand how to find an "existing idea".
-- pocmloc, Aug 09 2014


//a Utility patent. It's relatively cheap, but it only buys the inventor one year to flog the invention. //

I presume a Utility patent is like a Priority Application? You don't have to flog the invention within the year - you just have to turn the application into a full one within that period.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 09 2014


//You don't have to flog the invention within the year - you just have to turn the application into a full one within that period.//

True, but then that starts a process which costs approximately ten thousand dollars per brain-child per country. Even if you do have that kind of money lying around, what's to stop anyone from filing for patent in a country you didn't which has trade rights to your own, or in China?
What's to stop anyone from blatantly stealing it outright knowing that the cost of hauling a corporation and its lawyers through the various levels of court will bankrupt almost anyone of normal means?

It's got me baffled, which is why I think a collaborative effort would be good with a group as diverse as the halfbakery, but then that opens up its own hornets nest.

hmmmm
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 09 2014


Well, yes, all true. Patenting is expensive; enforcing patents is more expensive still. It should be better.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 09 2014


A makery, a full makery, or nonsense name like ebay, google, yahoo, Amazon. Calling it halfmakery is just wrong and confusing.

You really want to promote something that says "Come build a business with your halfbaked idea and some halfbaked funding and make it work in spite of the false starts." ?
-- popbottle, Aug 10 2014


//all true. Patenting is expensive; enforcing patents is more expensive still. It should be better.//

That does not help when hypothetical converges with reality.

...doesn't help one whit.

At least this idea approaches dealing with the issue, but it is far too open to abuse, so... (as to the first halfmakery collaboration),
...which approaches would best address this first and most paramount problem to such a collaboration existing out here in meat-space in the first place?

I've a few ideas which will need several patents each, and the trains of thought I follow branching from these kernels require several more patents for each branching.
Every single one of them leads to their theft, as far as I can feel-out.

That ain't good, but this idea could be, if overseen by decent people.

...I think

gets my (+) for trying anyhoo
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 10 2014


+ (I read at the beginning half fakery
-- pashute, Aug 10 2014


// decent people //

<link>
-- 8th of 7, Aug 10 2014


There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 10 2014


//things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. //

That was probably written before the Internet.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 10 2014


Weren't most good things?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 10 2014


[hippo], I think, if we published our content by cryptographically signing it, and then replicate these facts over a cryptocurrency blockchain like bitcoin transactions, then it would be very hard to steal ideas -- your authorship would be written in the blockchain practically irreversibly, and then, for everything except "trade secrets", it would be a matter of defining law around reliably traceable facts.
-- Mindey, Aug 18 2014



random, halfbakery