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Algorithmia Launches with More Than 800 Algorithms on Its Marketplace

73 pointsby ravimikabout 10 years ago

13 comments

lognabout 10 years ago
I&#x27;m concerned about the implications of these license terms:<p><pre><code> [...] you do hereby grant Algorithmia, in its capacity as the provider of the Services, a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully paid-up and royalty free license to use and permit others to use the Software (including the source code if made viewable) in any manner and without restriction of any kind or accounting to you, including, without limitation, the right to make, have made, sell, offer for sale, use, rent, lease, import, copy, prepare derivative works, publicly display, publicly perform, and distribute all or any part of the Software and any modifications, derivatives and combinations thereof and to sublicense (directly or indirectly through multiple tiers) or transfer any and all such rights; provided, however, that if your Software includes any FOSS, in the event of a conflict between the applicable FOSS license terms and the license terms set forth in this paragraph, the applicable FOSS license terms will control, but only to the extent required by the FOSS that you use. </code></pre> <a href="https://algorithmia.com/api_dev_terms" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;algorithmia.com&#x2F;api_dev_terms</a><p>(edited to add line breaks)
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perdunovabout 10 years ago
I&#x27;d better put my code on GitHub and double-license it with GPL and a commercial license. That way I would probably earn more bucks and keep my intellectual property.<p>Another point is that it seems that the concept was devised by somebody with a non-programming background, as it sounds rather weird to say that they host &quot;an algorithm&quot;. <i>An algorithm</i> is a theoretical concept. You cannot provide a theoretical concept as a service. You can provide <i>an implementation</i> of an algorithm. So it would be more correct to say that they just run software libraries on their servers.<p>For many &quot;algorithms&quot; going to an external server to process the data would be way more costly than to just get a software library and run it locally. So for those cases the idea is not useful. For example, the quicksort thing is purely a joke.<p>But hosting automatically scalable software services is generally not a bad idea at all.<p>For example, for some proprietary advanced AI services it seems pretty reasonable. Although I am not sure who&#x27;s going to just give away intellectual property like that to Algorithmia.
j2kunabout 10 years ago
I doubt academics will use this service to implement algorithms. The bounties are currently at ~$100 and the time commitment for a serious implementation of any nontrivial algorithm is worth far more. Not to mention tenure committees couldn&#x27;t care less.
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WhitneyLandabout 10 years ago
Ironically, it seems the biggest opportunity here is implementation rather than theory.<p>You could view this as a general marketplace for micro services, which may or may not utilize complex algorithms. The stuff that&#x27;s too small or too vertical to be offered by the mainstream cloud offerings.<p>The academic slant will become less emphasized and the value add, time savings, and platform as a service aspect will get promoted.
codingdaveabout 10 years ago
The first algorithm I see on the page is Dijkstra&#x27;s algorithm. The wikipedia page for that algorithm includes pseduocode to implement it. I&#x27;m also seeing pretty simple examples of day to day programming tasks being marketed as algorithms. (How to read an RSS feed? Really?)<p>I do see value in a service that offers me algorithms in areas that are new to me, and I&#x27;m even willing to pay for that. But the current content is not well curated, and even if it was, the license terms are completely unacceptable, as mentioned in other comments.<p>Nevertheless, I like the broad vision here... it just isn&#x27;t implemented in a way that makes sense to me.
keithwhorabout 10 years ago
Doesn&#x27;t this go against the entire concept of open source? Isn&#x27;t it unethical to sell access to algorithms if the developers of such have had any access to any public funding (quite often the case in academia)? Isn&#x27;t this exactly what the push for &quot;open access&quot; re: journals is trying to fight against?
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therobot24about 10 years ago
A few things that irk me:<p>1) No info of what was done to solve the solution, or do i need to login to view? (e.g. <a href="https://algorithmia.com/algorithms/zskurultay/ImageSimilarity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;algorithmia.com&#x2F;algorithms&#x2F;zskurultay&#x2F;ImageSimilarit...</a> - is this just a simple correlation or something more)<p>2) Buying your homework solutions, for example, <a href="https://algorithmia.com/bounties/35" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;algorithmia.com&#x2F;bounties&#x2F;35</a> - they want a CRF implemented with Stochastic Gradient Descent for $150, i&#x27;m sure someone more familiar with one of the matlab libraries (such as UGM) could put something together, but you get the point<p>3) I&#x27;m not sure how this appeals to academics... There&#x27;s movement for reproducible research through open sourcing code&#x2F;simulations and charging for that privilege just seems wrong (even if they have the <i>option</i> to open source)<p>4) Signing up to enable the console is a bit of a pain. I&#x27;m not going to sign up unless i see some value in the service, and since many pages are just empty or bland descriptions (input x -&gt; output y) it&#x27;s hard to really get a feel if the solution is what i&#x27;m looking for
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hasanccabout 10 years ago
I like the idea of bringing the academia closer to the developers. Let&#x27;s face it, with the wave of coding bootcamps etc. there are a lot of developers without the STEM background needed for sophisticated applications. I think that this vision can present a lot more opportunities for interesting products. It may also speed up the pipeline from the academia to the deployed application.
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auzengiabout 10 years ago
Peter Thiel says &quot;Competition is for losers.&quot; IMHO Algorithmia will prove it with its market niche and originality.
csearsabout 10 years ago
In case anyone was wondering, quicksort is already available on the marketplace for the bargain price of 1 credit* per second:<p><a href="https://algorithmia.com/algorithms/swm8023/quicksort" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;algorithmia.com&#x2F;algorithms&#x2F;swm8023&#x2F;quicksort</a><p>*100 credits is about $0.01
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mlmonkeyabout 10 years ago
Since the page wasn&#x27;t clear, how does this work? What&#x27;s to prevent someone from just downloading the code and using it forever without royalties?
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ivancheabout 10 years ago
TRWTF is that there is a bounty for a Traveling Salesman algorithm :)
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heironeousabout 10 years ago
Programmers will have to list their Algorithmia profiles in their CVs now. I&#x27;m gonna start mining algorithms to post on here, then comes the massive gainz