[Kc] draft bylaws of Kansas City netflixprize team

David Nicol davidnicol at gmail.com
Mon Oct 9 23:27:27 PDT 2006


On 10/7/06, Matthew Wilson <matthew at veradox.com> wrote:
>  It's taken me about 10 hours


Dave's Proposal:

* the Kansas City netflixprize (NFP) team will be abbreviated to KCNFPT

* KCNFPT is a cooperative effort to win a progress prize in the NFP contest

* in the event of winning a prize, proceeds will be divided by share weight

* share weight is a linear function of hours worked for KCNFPT, so that
  the sum of all participant's share weights is 1

* hours worked are cumulative and nonrevocable

* to add submitted hours worked to your total they must be approved by holders
  of over half of the share weight before your submission, i.e. hours approval
  motions require 50% share weight to carry

* you're not allowed to work more than 30 hours a week on KCNFPT unless
  you're currently unemployed, in which case you may work up to 60 hours
  a week on it

* hours are submitted weekly through the KCNFPT hours submission mechanism,
  which will probably be a web interface by Dave but might just be the
mailing list

* that's the KCNFPT mailing list, which has not been set up yet

* on joining KCNFPT, a new participant must declare how many hours they've
put into their work on the NFP before joining, and that becomes their initial
hours tally

* people who leave the team are not eligible for a share, but leaving the team
can be blocked by a 10% share

* joining and leaving motions require a 90% approval by share weight to carry

* amending these bylaws, which are the contract under which the team operates
as a team,requires full consensus without abstention (although a 90%
majority can kick
the blocks out to achieve that)

subject to debate:


* participants may leave KCNFPT, but if they leave they may not use methods
developed within the KCNFPT process in their own NFP submissions or in the
NFP submissions of other teams; it is expected that multiple NFP teams may
be used to allow submission of results for scoring more often than would
otherwise be allowed, and if any team including participating kcnfpt members
wins, it will be as if kcnfpt had won


* there will be a non-disclosure agreement to prevent
  leaking of team-proprietary methods before the contest
  is over (or we give up)



***********************

Executive summary:  The team will attempt to support Matthew Wilson, and
possibly other capable and motivated heros who may appear, by discussing
direction and strategy and by spiking possibile improvements. Time invested
in the team  equals weight of your share in the event we win something. Even
without winning, the collaborative experience will be worthwhile as an example
of a collaborative experience if nothing else.  The potential upside beyond
the contest at hand is the forming of an execution-capable software engineering
team who are willing and able to work for deferred reward, who may then seek
future projects with greater expected reward/effort ratios.


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