PAY isn’t a Titans of Data’s product, but I thought I’d share my perspective as a methodologist on some of the interactions between @ncitron , @scott_lew_is , and @afromac in this thread.
Firstly, I’ll just say that Noah is a absolutely a highly valued member of the community and one of the key smart contract engineers who would likely play a big role in developing PAY from an engineering perspective.
With that said, Noah you said two things that make working with Index Coop dreadful for methodologists.
1. Unreliable Negotiating Partner:
I’m not saying you should not be able to voice your opinion or that the existing process for negotiating fee splits is good (it’s not), but at some point the community needs to defer to the expertise of the Business Development working group.
BD is the owner of these conversations and is accountable for their outcomes. If the community is unhappy with those outcomes, there needs to be some mechanism for that feedback to go to BD who represents the Index Coop, not the methodologist.
Having just been through these conversations myself, it’s nerve-wracking and painful to go through ~3-4 weeks of negotiations to get to an agreement with BD, which is already painfully slow, just to have community members who are not intimately familiar with the details throw the agreement into question at the 1-yard line.
I completely agree with the sentiments @scott_lew_is shared in this Twitter thread.
2. Threatening IP Theft:
As a methodologist, this is the kind of comment that makes me fearful of working with Index Coop. When I first started building DATA, this was a fear that I had - if I’m doing everything transparently, couldn’t someone just steal my idea and make all of my effort wasted? Ultimately, I decided that was a risk worth taking because of the power of the community.
At this point, DFP and Matthew Graham have been developing PAY for something like 6+ months (the initial SYI proposal was near end of March). Why should methodologists invest their time, energy, and resources with Index Coop if the community is just going to steal their ideas anyhow?
Methodologists can, and will, take their methodologies outside of Index Coop if there are not strong norms around IP ownership of methodologies.
A note on the community and guiding principles:
It often feels to me that “we interact with empathy” is put on a pedestal above all the guiding principles in this community.
If I’m putting myself in @scott_lew_is and DFP’s shoes, the Index Coop is not living up to these guiding principles:
How can a methodologist feel like they belong in community with unreliable negotiations? How can they feel safe if the community is threatening to steal their ideas?
CC: Index Coop 2.0 - Partnering with Methodologists Group: @allan.g , @fallow8 , @Jo_K , @snasps , @oneski22 , @Mringz , @TheYoungCrews