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Has anyone here ever tried to contribute to the OpenCog project?
Because I have.
You know what I learned?
This open source* code is missing huge components that are proprietary parts of Ben's Novamente system. So if you're a coder, you can't actually compile it, run it, or do anything with else with it. Ben's holding all the key components hostage and refuses to release them until he's paid money. If you'd like to pay someone a second time to open source the code they already wrote, OpenCog is an excellent charity. Hopefully after he gets enough money to actually show us what he written, Ben's software will cause an amazing Singularity with ponies for everyone. I guess proprietary software can't create Singularities... or ponies.... or funding.
- Open Source = closed source components you can't have + empty stubs of code
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My comment relates to the state of OpenCog when I downloaded it in November 2009. It's entirely possible that things are much improved since then. I think it was reasonable to assume that things hadn't changed much though since the code looked mostly empty at that time and I didn't sense that there was any active development by anyone who wasn't on the Novamente/OpenCog team an an employee or close team member. There were comments in the code at the time stating that pieces were missing because they hadn't yet been released from Novamente. Hopefully those are gone now.
Sorry I didn't join you on IRC. I never noticed you had a channel.
I could have sent an email to the list. But again, it looked like I couldn't contribute to OpenCog unless I somehow got hired by OpenCog/Novamente or ingratiated myself to the current team and found a way to become part of the inner circle. I was considering if that would be a good idea at the time but figured that emailing the list with "Duuuhhhh... I can't compile it. WTF?" would only frustrate internal developers, get condescending replies from people who had unreleased code that made their versions work, or get requests for funding to help open source the unreleased code.
Hopefully things have improved in the last 1.5 years. I would love to support OpenCog. The vision you guys have looks great.
Ah, OK. Thanks for clearing that up. Sorry for my perhaps harsh tone, I didn't imagine your comment would be based on an old/incomplete version of OpenCog, you should have mentioned that in your post or even better update your knowledge before posting! There's been a lot of work since then.
You can use it to run a virtual pet under Multiverse (although you need either 2 machines or a virtual box, one with Linux and the other one with Windows because OpenCog isn't completely ported for Windows and Multiverse runs under Windows). It is also used to control the Nao robot in a lab in China. Soon it will be possible to connect it in the Unity3D game engine with a much improved tool kit to code you own bot (because currently the API is really tough to understand and use).
Just for playing around with the various components (except MOSES which is a standalone executable for now) there is a Scheme binding, and there will be soon a Python binding.
It's really a lot of work and except the HK team who got a grant to focus entirely on it for the next 2 years and some students in the BLISS lab in China we only manage to contribute via loosely related contracts that do not always help advancing OpenCog itself (though we're trying our best to direct our efforts toward it).
So any help is very welcome!
http://wiki.opencog.org/w/Volunteer http://wiki.opencog.org/w/The_Open_Cognition_Project