Just for the Record

This past week, I interviewed for a position at a search company called Kosmix. When I presented these ideas it was a bit difficult to read the reaction, although it appeared that an obviously brilliant and rather sardonic product manager (it takes one to know one) was intrigued, but perhaps skeptical when I described that providing tools for humans might be a way to differentiate the product in a compelling way. I wasn't hired, which is fine; though just for the record, if you see Kosmix develop this approach, let the record reflect where they got the idea.

By default, I would not expect such a fine entrepreneurial group to engage in an unethical disregard for intellectual property or to shun even the most rudimentary academic integrity in source attribution. However, there would be no IP law if there were no need for it, even among extraordinarily educated monkeys like us.

Of course, in the event of such an unlikely hypothetical development, the company could change its mind and respect the license on these pages; after which, one would happily amend these statements. Better yet, perhaps someone further up the management chain, who can see the bigger picture, could do the right thing and hire me to lead an initiative to create the tools I've been describing over the past five years. That could be a mutually profitable scenario.

In any event, I wish them only success and encourage the purchase of licensing rights to use of any of the ideas protected within these pages, should they so choose to implement them for branded commercial use. Of course, my old compadre Larry might just as well enjoy the opportunity to further strengthen the Creative Commons license that he invented, if things were to unexpectedly not work out amicably.

It's all good, yo.