Heehe $12,000 for the “best” source code (including moral rights – so you will never get credited if its a big hit) is a complete joke imo.
I would urge local developers to be cautious about these competitions and approach them strategically.
For example, you can use these kind of competitions as idea triggers to (lawfully) get clues and inspiration on what problems need solving (*without* participating or signing up, as that potentially binds you to their T&Cs) – then form teams/coalitions to solve these problems independently for a much bigger potential payoff.
On policy these things are happening because there are glaring loopholes in our intellectual property laws that allow *IP mining* to take place without any restriction or consequences. Its literally a free for all.
Kenya needs an “Intellectual Property Resources Act”, which would invalidate exploitative contracts / terms and conditions is long overdue. This is the kind of 21st Century legislation that can stimulate innovation and the creation of *high quality jobs* in Kenya.
21st Century resources include: 1. Attention or engagement (systems designed to distract people from contributing to economic activity) 2. Data (for mining/analytics or ML)3. Source code, novel circuits, algorithms, chemical formulations, mixtures, blue prints (including business plans, pricing models etc).4. Valuable ideas (e.g. “please call me”) that cannot be protected via any combination of the old industrial era laws e.g. patents, copyright, UM & DM.5. other?
Thanks for the heads up and Good day!Patrick.
On Monday, November 12, 2018, 2:01:43 PM GMT+3, Wainaina Mungai via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Some developers are raising concerns privately that great initiatives such as Zindi are “cheaply buying AI code” from Africa zindi.africa/faq/data_scientists
According to them, “Zindi runs high-value expertise programming competitions/ hackathons in Kenya and Nigeria… and demands code in exchange for low pay prizes. It is unfairly low-cost labour for them.”
See attached. Are their concerns valid?
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