Transcribed from 6 November 2011 Seminar on TVP Teamspeak.

Open-source response from TVP   Timestamp: 28:30  –  34:50

Andrew: Roxanne, Sven has just got into a little chat on the subject of open-source and how it doesn’t really apply to The Venus Project, and why. I think this is quite an important question for the people that have, especially at the moment with open-source really taking off due to the anger against the establishment and these companies, etc.

Roxanne: Sure that would be great.

Sven: OK I see that down in the chat as well as in my inbox. People are asking why The Venus Project is not going open-source. There are actually several reasons for that. The most important one, in my understanding is the idea of The Venus Project is the ultimate result of a long time of research that Roxanne already mentioned Jacque has been doing. And releasing something out to the open-source community would lead them to adding their own ideas to the foundation and the thoughts behind The Venus Project. The thing is, the whole thing would become obfuscated and within the open source community there is a whole lot of contribution so too many ideas were actually trying to influence the basic idea behind The Venus Project. So another reason is, as Jacque already mentioned, that if we release parts of our products into the domain of the open-source, the risk is too high that parts are actually taken and either changed in appearance or change something in the source and then taken to make profit of it. Or on the other hand, take it… change it a bit and patent it and keep us from using it. So there is ultimately at the moment no point that I can see where open-source can contribute to The Venus Project.

Jacque: There are many people that have already taken our pictures and design and tried to raise money for their own direction utilizing our information. Did you know that? These decisions that I make are not based on my personal feelings, they are based on what people do with the information we give them. They do not necessarily support The Venus Project without mentioning The Venus Project. They use our pictures, inventions, recommendations to raise funds for some development of their own.

Roxanne: Also we had somebody here from one of the lectures from the Pentagon. They just happened to drive somebody here, but he really liked it. And he was adamant, telling us not to put things out because they have a department that he worked in, in the Pentagon in the government, that just takes different designs, which they have in most industries and turns them around and then they patent them. Did you want to go with some more things Sven? That’s excellent what you are talking about, absolutely correct.

Sven: Yeah just again picking up what is being written down in the chat… A license is something that is bound to laws. And how can you ensure that a law is actually taken to credit or taken into account. You cannot keep someone who is really willing to take something away from you, to just limit them by laws. So no matter what license I can put on any product that is done by The Venus Project, that doesn’t keep you from taking it so that it is not recognized as part of The Venus Project, so there is no way of suing them.

Roxanne: Even if you’re in the right and you try to sue someone, doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful in that. Depends on how good your Lawyer is and how educated the jury is… or uneducated.

Andrew: Another issue on this that is commonly misunderstood, and we get this with the CORCEN Project for example, is people say, “Why can’t we have certain things of The Venus Project that are open-source or freely available to everybody.” The Venus Project is a complete system, just like your body is a complete system. If you took away your lungs and heart and brain, your legs and your arms wouldn’t move around and you wouldn’t go to work and you wouldn’t be able to eat and things like that because your body wouldn’t function. The Venus Project is exactly like that. You can’t break it up into parts… you can’t take away the CORSEN and run it as an open-source project and expect to get the results of The Venus Project and a Resource-Based Economy. It is a total system, a total re-design of our culture. It has to work as a system, so we want to protect, as much as possible, everything of all of the designs in The Venus Project so that when we come to actually implement a Resource-Based Economy or even a test city that we can do so without having to go through the problems of trying to prove that we came up with the concept first and someone else stole the designs and painted it. We don’t want to go through all of that, we want to be able to do this as and when we are able to do it. I think if you are really serious about wanting to live in a Resource-Based Economy, as defined by The Venus Project, and it’s not an ego issue that it’s something that you want to do things your way or whatever, if that’s your end goal then I can’t see why you would have a problem with it.

Jacque: We do have an open system. We do have a lot of people submitting ideas to The Venus Project. But 99% of the ideas have already been worked out. They think they are submitting new suggestions, but I have been at it for many years, and the suggestions that most people make are very old ideas. Very few people come up with very new methods of doing things. In other words, they say, “I would like to submit a suggestion.” Wonderful! We welcome submission of all kinds of suggestion, this is how we grow. There is nothing the matter with making suggestions. And do that continuously, that is what we mean by an open system. We welcome suggestions. But just remember, that you always think that your own suggestion is brand new. And that remains to be checked out.