In my prior posts and communications I have held back certain information about the relationship between PDO, The Knight Foundation, and the Drupal community. Yesterday, I decided to come forward with evidence that shows that Trabian Shorters of the The Knight Foundation is in violation of my company's NDA and is utilizing Knight Foundation grants, sponsorship dollars, and lucrative contracts not only to dupe well-meaning people within the Drupal community into assisting the The Knight Foundation in intellectual property theft, but also in futile attempts to derail PDO development (excerpt below).
While I know that my prior post have had a harder edge to them because I've just lived a harder life... each posts has been truthful and logical. Today, I start this new discussion to put forth some simple questions to the drupal community at large,"Are the actions of the Knight Foundation the acceptable ethical standard for this community?" Perhaps I am idealistic in my comprehension of open-source, but I thought the end goal was/is to enable the little guy to participate and become upwardly mobile in society by creating tools, devoid of prohibitive license fees, that free intellectual expression and thereby make the world a better place.
Photoshop vs. Gimp
Outlook vs. EvolutionMail
Messenger vs. Pidgin
and now.. The Knight Foundation, Google, and cohorts vs. PDO
PDO is the proverbial, "little guy"... no I can't write a single grant check to anyone in the drupal community, nor can I sponsor your events, nor can I provide lucrative contracts to win your favor. However, I can do something that non of the corporate gods can do, nor want to do... I can clearly show any of you with the patience how to use your skills to forever fundamentally change the world for the better in less than 25 minutes.
Watch the live demo of PDO at Drupal Atlanta
Watch a full screencast of the PDO system
I would love to know the thoughts of Drupal community members that are -not- funded by the corporate gods.....
Excerpt Below: Original Thread
A lot of you have noticed how odd it is that they are attempting to ban me so quickly and those of you that have seen the presentation have asked the obvious question of:
"Why wouldn't the Drupal higher ups embrace PDO, a project that obviously can feed millions of people and greatly expand the size drupal community around the world?"
The short answer is money, lots of money. An open-source community is not really an open-source community when its leadership can be bought off to the prevent the rise of projects that can truly have an impact. The answer as to who is writing the checks here, there are a few entities with vested interest in stopping PDO, but the one that concerns us at the moment is The Knight Foundation.
I am not saying all, but there a number of drupal higher ups that know the story that I am about to share with everyone (Oleg knows what I am about to state and the names...and the drupalnyc folks will recognize this story as well from my Aug. 2009 intro of PDO, but now I am adding the names and other details..)
The PDO Back Story:
For almost 6 months spanning October 2006 to March/April 2007 I was virtually locked in my bedroom designing the functionality and various stages of the PDO project. During which I paid 3 University of Michigan graduate students in relevants fields of study to conduct research and attempt to break the core PDO business model. When they were unable to disprove my work, I decided to move forward with turning my vision into reality. However, having dealt with prior instances of attempted intellectual property theft, I knew that only two things would result if I published the entire system at once:
a.) The ovarall system would appear much too complex, no one would understand it, and the work would go nowhere..
-Or-
b.) A wealthier person would claim my work, keep it for themselves and my family would never benefit from my efforts.
Therefore I, stripped out enough functionality from my overall design to create a compelling business arguement for start-up capital (donations). The 40% of PDO Stage One that I have published, has the ability to alleviate poverty on a scale of millions using 100% market-available web technology. However, this small portion of the system because it is so easily replicable creates the possibility for simultaneous implementations of PDO systems in multiple countries at the same time, thereby accelerating the current path of unsustainable development the Earth is already on.. (Think: if you devise a means to raise millions of people out poverty at a rate faster than previously thought possible, but fail compensate for the additional consumption of natural resources and release CO2 into the atmosphere one eventually creates a much bigger problem in a shorter amount of time, I call this "The Consumption Paradox", however I don't fear it... I have the other stages of PDO design).
Realizing the potential danger, before going public with my work I decided to donate my entire project to Google for free with basic stipulations that I be allowed to remain on the Board of Directors so that as I 100% refine the later stages of the system, I would be in a position to hand the designs directly Google management for implementation. The overall benefit of donating PDO to Google would have been the ability to utilize Google's resources to finish the design, connect PDO to The World Trade Orgnization, The U.N., and other entities to create a series of international treaties (terms and conditions) for nations to participate in the PDO program. In effect creating a controlled nation by nation rollout of the PDO system that would result in a lot less additional strain on the world's remaining natural resources and less impact on the environment.
I contacted Google, Google Cares, and Google.org eventually being led to Sonal Shah former head of Google poverty alleviation programs, but after months of Googlers turning down a simple one hour meeting for seemingly culturally ignorant reasons, I decided to do the next best thing and present PDO to a 3rd party organization that Google financially supports under the protection of a legally binding non-disclosure agreement with the logic that I can use that organization to assist me in contacting Google. However, I knew this strategy of using a 3rd party was very dangerous because of the large amount of money involved in PDO transactions.
The Google supported 3rd party that I located is called Ashoka. Ashoka's core mission is to assist social entrepreneurs, like me, to implement their business plans with an Ashoka Fellowship and business connections. I contacted Ashoka and on May 1st 2007 I met with Trabian Shorters, who at the time was the U.S. National Director for Ashoka. Trabian Shorters signed my company's non-disclosure agreement, all of you can see his signature here. During the meeting with Trabian Shorters in the Arlington, VA headquarters of Ashoka, I showed him the PDO prototype. Within 30 minutes Trabian Shorters said that was "sold" on my project and made various inquiries about, during which he learned of my problem with identity theft and that I come from a poor family. I stressed to Trabian Shorters that it was imperative that we set-up a meeting with Google as soon as possible. Here you can find copies of the powerpoint presentations that I gave Trabian Shorters. Trabian Shorters agreed to rush through an Ashoka Fellowship review for me within 30 days and even sent me an email confirming this intention which can be read here.
After the meeting with Ashoka I returned to Ann Arbor, MI where I was residing at the time and waited for Trabian Shorters to arrange the meeting with Google as he agreed.. first week goes by nothing happens, second week goes by nothing happens, third week comes along and I get a phone call from Trabian Shorters during which he begins asking me very detailed questions about how the point incentives on the PDO platform operate. It was at this point I stated to Trabian Shorters that there is no way he could ask the detailed questions that he was asking without actually looking at my website and that I knew he could not be looking at my website because, not trusting him, I cut-off his username and password access to the Poverty's Demise .Org prototype 3 days after I met him (at the time of our meeting I still had the PDO prototype under password protection) and that only he could ask such questions is if he had printed out a copy of the PDO website, which is direct violation of the non-disclosure agreement he had signed, to whcih he replied "well, you know, non-disclosure agreements don't really protect anything."
My reply, which I know is echoing in his head at this very moment,"I know (that nda's protect nothing), that's why I only showed you part of the system do not underestimate me.
Some people reading this post already know the name Trabian Shorters because since my meeting with him he has become the Vice-President of Communities for The Knight Foundation and from this position he, Marc Fest (director of marketing of Knight Foundation who I also informed of this situation), and other Knight Foundation folks have been giving large amounts of sponsorship money, grant money, and cooperative contracts to high ups in the Drupal open-source community. To Trabian Shorters, the folks at Ashoka, The Knight Foundation, and Google feel free to sue me in open court if anything I have written is not factually true. I would love for us all to take polygraphs tests under oath if possible. As a matter of fact for everyone reading this post, after a generous donation from a friend of mine familiar with the situation I was able to temporarily retain the services of Dozier Internet Law, who after reading my communications and performing various due diligence related to this matter decided there's was enough evidence to justify sending this notification of non-disclosure letter violation to Ashoka and Trabian Shorters which they denied because they know.... they are rich, I am poor and they can afford the lawyers to fully litigate the case, while I can not.
As for Google, they are ultimately responsible for PDO being in the open, a simple one hour meeting would have changed the prior 3 years and a lot less people would be in danger... Also, some of you might find it very interesting that Google has been watching has been watching this thread. Here is a screenshot of my ip address tracker app showing a visit to my site, by not a googlebot, but someone actually from google on April 1st just as this thread got widely known. Why would Google be keeping tabs on a nobody like me? Am I really that interesing? Or is PDO a possible threat?.... Well yes, allow me to explain why.
Google's core revenue stream is advertising revenue and while PDO obviously is not a search engine, there are a lot of services PDO has the potential to provide that would overlap with / compete with Google for its core revenue stream. For example as an end-user you one day decide to open a new email account and you have multiple email services to choose from. Would you open a new email account with Gmail where you know the advertising revenue is being split amongst wealthy investors in the form of a stock dividend? -OR- Would you open an account with Poverty's Demise .Org where you know 100% of the advertising revenue is being redirected into the hands of the world's poorest children in the form of a "Public Welfare Dividend", effectively turning our consumeristic nature into a benefit for the world?
- In conclusion, while this situation may seem complex with of all of the political games being played... its really not. I also bear some responsibility for the complexity of the moment, but I make no more excuse other than being human. My prior writings, came across harder than intended, but understand every morning of my life I start my day knowing that family and friends are dying under the weight of poverty and Trabian Shorters and Oleg consciously knew this when they simply decided against doing their jobs. 3 years ago when I completed my first round of designs for PDO never did I imagine that such a small section of PDO with obvious benefits to society would meet this much opposition...and from who? billionaire foundations claiming to empower communities, supposed open-source advocates, and another company that claims not to be evil... Everyone who has read this far can do one simple thing to reach a decison as to who the good guy is and who the bad guys are:
Watch the videos that I have posted.
Trabian, Oleg, and Acquia have seen the presentation...
So has Princeton, MIT, and Harvard....
Think for yourself.
Me:
-I'm giving my work away for free.
(Any programmer that wants to develop a local version for his/her country, you have my blessing. I just ask that you follow the Three Founding Principles.) Contact me anytime and I will answer any questions you have. (Skype name : hober_mallow)
-Openly warning the world about very serious possible dangers.
-Trying to bring attention to a small town full of people dying of cancer
Nothing to loose, the world to gain. I want to feed million people in my lifetime or die trying.
Them:
-Gain a database with infinite data mining value and a multi-billion dollar revenue stream.
-Heavily invested in forprofit prisons that need poor people to populate them to earn profits
-Using evil to protect a billion dollar advertising revenue stream, that should be going to feed children.
You've had a good ride.. it's time to get off the horse.
Lastly, for those you reading this that want to get-off the sidelines and get in the game... here's how you can help
