Feedback/Discussion on Eterna Players Alliance and Eterna Commons Proposals

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Since late last year, a handful of players (including Jennifer Pearl, lroppy, Brourd, and myself), with input from the development team, have been working on a plan to create an independent, player-driven organization to help grow Eterna and increase the involvement of players in Eterna’s future. This has taken fruit in two proposals which we are now releasing for comment to the Eterna community: the creation of the Eterna Players Alliance, and an implementation of an expanded Eterna Commons.

The Eterna Players Alliance is the player-led organization which we aim to launch later this year. A draft of its bylaws is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LRY5jYazOMLqWZqF-2xDbNYk7AOZpW5RA41SKc-Wwjg/edit

Eterna Commons is the method by which research groups are able to coordinate with players and among themselves. The draft organizational participation agreement is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bq0zIc1vHkW7CsEWPWOLhHZ5zNk9xV-bRDgx6-RK_qk/edit

These initiatives will shape the future of Eterna, and will directly affect players. We ask that everyone consider the proposals and provide your opinion on whether or not you approve of them and provide any feedback you may have before we start the process of putting them into effect.

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Feedback on the “NEW Eterna Commons Draft Organizational Agreement” at [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bq0zIc1vHkW7CsEWPWOLhHZ5zNk9xV-bRDgx6-RK_qk/edit ].

The composition of the Executive Committee includes “a maximum of ten (10) representatives from Contributing Groups”. There is ambiguity in this description. Should there be one representative per Contributing Group? Can a single Contributing Group have more than one representative on the Executive Committee? If multiple laboratories at a single academic institution contribute to Eterna, does that qualify for multiple representatives from a single academic institution?

I would propose removing the mention of a specific versioning system (Git, here) from the Developers paragraph under Governance and Membership. Specifying a specific system here automatically raises the complexity of acting to replace the system, later on. Instead, the “versioning system” phrase itself should suffice. I would make the same proposal for additional paragraphs (such as Contributions).

The “Eterna Platform Management” says, “The representative from the Player Organization can opt to require a majority vote of the members of the Player Organization in order to approve the project at their sole discretion.” This is the sole member of the executive committee specifically addressed in the paragraph, and this sentence describes an act that is internal to the Player Organization. Further, this sentence conflicts with the Player Organization paragraph’s sentence that claims the Player Organization “will be structured and run by its own bylaws as developed by players.”

The Intellectual Property Decisions paragraph, under Governance and Membership, lists “organizational policy” in its first paragraph. Which organization is this? The Introduction paragraph describes Eterna Commons as a collaborative effort, not as an organization. So, could this “organizational policy” be that of the Lead Organization, or the Player Organization, or any of the Contributing Groups or Participating Organizations?

Most of the document uses the phrase, “Lead Organization”. “Lead Institution”, however, appears twice in the document, and is not defined.

In the Distribution paragraph, this following sentence has no main verb, so we don’t know what’s intended to happen: “For commercial purposes, organizations that desire to use, modify, or distribute the intellectual property in original or modified form to provide support to Eterna Commons by means of a license agreement that acknowledges the obligation, addresses risk and use of names, and provides a reasonable mechanism for financial support of Eterna Commons.”

The Eterna Commons Financial Guidelines paragraphs have the sentence, “This list may be amended by a vote of the Board.” The word, Board, appears nowhere else in the entire document. What is the Board?

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You make some good observations. Concerning the issue with the “Eterna Platform Management” part the intention is to have the player organization ran by its own set of laws as its own organization. This organization would then have someone appointed to sit on the executive committee of the Eterna Commons to represent the players. This person would have the ability to call a vote of the players to approve a project. I think that this still keeps things separate. It is the equivalent of the player rep having the ability to veto any project. The only difference is that the rep is punting it to a vote of the players. Does this address your concern?

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In the “Eterna Platform Management” paragraph mentioned above, I propose that the entire sentence about the representative from the Player Organization should be struck out of the “NEW Eterna Commons Draft Organizational Agreement” document.

The accompanying “Eterna Players Alliance Bylaws Draft” document calls this person the Eterna Commons Representative, who is a member and an officer of the Alliance’s Board of Directors. The bylaws draft document describes the rights and responsibilities of Alliance members and officers in much greater detail. I think the Eterna Commons Representative already has the right to call a vote within the Alliance on a project, and that such vote is already a majority vote as described under Alliance member meetings.

The Alliance representative to the Commons thus already does what the Commons Agreement sentence says. The sentence in the “Eterna Platform Management” paragraph thus becomes superfluous. And being stated in the Commons Agreement, this superfluous sentence is out of reach of the members of the Alliance, should they themselves desire to further refine their representative’s responsibilities on their behalf.

If all members of the Commons Executive Committee have veto power over projects, then the representative from the Player Organization on that Executive Committee has that power already, too; although my interpretation is that it is a majority of the Committee who have veto power, not any single member.

It’s appropriate here to say that all this is just my opinion, developed only from my own experiences.

And as an added item, since the Eterna Players Alliance will have assets at least in the form of annual dues, their bylaws should have an article about future dissolution of the alliance. Putting such an article into the bylaws at the birth of the organization prevents many headaches later on.

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I think the Eterna Commons Representative already has the right to call a vote within the Alliance on a project, and that such vote is already a majority vote as described under Alliance member meetings.

That is true - however, the Commons is REQUIRING the veto to be due to a majority vote. It cannot be, say, up to the representative or the EPA board.

And being stated in the Commons Agreement, this superfluous sentence is out of reach of the members of the Alliance, should they themselves desire to further refine their representative’s responsibilities on their behalf.

This is exactly the intent, per my comment above. Look at this perspective of a potential partner in the Commons - the intent of this clause is that if a majority of players disagrees with a project, it can be vetoed. Organizations would likely be wary of an individual being granted this power - it is much more likely for the decision to become “arbitrary”.

And as an added item, since the Eterna Players Alliance will have assets at least in the form of annual dues.

This is not the case - to simplify setting up the EPA, the dues are not accepted by the EPA - they are donations to Eterna Commons.

If all members of the Commons Executive Committee have veto power over projects, then the representative from the Player Organization on that Executive Committee has that power already, too; although my interpretation is that it is a majority of the Committee who have veto power, not any single member.

A project can be blocked in one of two ways:

  1. A majority of the Executive Committee votes to block it
  2. A majority of the members of the EPA vote to block it

For further clarity: These two documents, while developed by the same people and proposed together, are two separate documents. The EPA is its own organization, with its own rules. The Commons is its own coallition, with its own rules. The overlap is the Eterna Commons Representative, who is given specific restrictions and responsibilities by both the Commons and the EPA, being a member of both. The Eterna Commons document should make NO assumption about the contents of the EPA bylaws, as much as possible. The Commons is in charge of determining how their representative may interact within the Commons. Similarly, the EPA should make no assumption about the contents of the Commons bylaws, as much as possible. They provide the representative, and may have extra restrictions or responsibilities for them. But there are some portions of their role within the Commons that the Commons designates.

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Your explanations are helping me to understand the intentions behind the documents. Thank you!

In my last reply, I tossed in a comment that the Eterna Players Alliance Bylaws draft should have an article about future dissolution of the alliance. I believe a dissolution article would be valuable on general principle. Article V in the alliance bylaws says, “The Board of Directors shall have control of and be responsible for the management of the affairs and property of the organization.” If there is mention of property, there should be a bylaws article disposing of that property upon dissolution of the organization.

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That’s a fair point. While we aren’t planning on having any property in the near future, we’re leaving the door open for that to happen. Maybe the property should be dispersed to the Commons?

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Just getting to addressing these (great!) points.

The composition of the Executive Committee includes “a maximum of ten (10) representatives from Contributing Groups”. There is ambiguity in this description. Should there be one representative per Contributing Group? Can a single Contributing Group have more than one representative on the Executive Committee? If multiple laboratories at a single academic institution contribute to Eterna, does that qualify for multiple representatives from a single academic institution?

Reworded to clarify that it’s one per contributing group. Each laboratory is a Contributing Group, so by proxy yes there could be multiple representatives originating from a given academic institution (and that was the intent).

I would propose removing the mention of a specific versioning system (Git, here) from the Developers paragraph under Governance and Membership. Specifying a specific system here automatically raises the complexity of acting to replace the system, later on. Instead, the “versioning system” phrase itself should suffice. I would make the same proposal for additional paragraphs (such as Contributions).

Fair point, changed accordingly.

The Intellectual Property Decisions paragraph, under Governance and Membership, lists “organizational policy” in its first paragraph. Which organization is this? The Introduction paragraph describes Eterna Commons as a collaborative effort, not as an organization. So, could this “organizational policy” be that of the Lead Organization, or the Player Organization, or any of the Contributing Groups or Participating Organizations?

I think this was brought up before and was just never directly dealt with… It is definitely ambiguous, and actually comes from another document which this is derived from. I believe it is intended as (and how we read it was) Lead Organization policy - I’ve changed it to that.

Most of the document uses the phrase, “Lead Organization”. “Lead Institution”, however, appears twice in the document, and is not defined.

This was changed at one point, and thought everything was updated - it should all be Lead Organization. Changed.

In the Distribution paragraph, this following sentence has no main verb, so we don’t know what’s intended to happen: “For commercial purposes, organizations that desire to use, modify, or distribute the intellectual property in original or modified form to provide support to Eterna Commons by means of a license agreement that acknowledges the obligation, addresses risk and use of names, and provides a reasonable mechanism for financial support of Eterna Commons.”

Bunch of stuff moved around there and I guess the verb was left to the side. Should be “For commercial purposes, organizations that desire to use, modify, or distribute the intellectual property in original or modified form are expected to provide support to Eterna Commons…” Fixed.

The Eterna Commons Financial Guidelines paragraphs have the sentence, “This list may be amended by a vote of the Board.” The word, Board, appears nowhere else in the entire document. What is the Board?

Should be Executive Committee. Fixed.

Thank you so much for your astute observations!

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Yes, dispersing property to the Commons upon dissolution seems the rational choice, now. If there were an alternative proposed after the bylaws have been approved, the proposal could go through the normal amendment process.

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I don’t quiet understand Eterna Commons Organizational Agreement part about 
“Dividends to Participating Organizations”, is it possible that participating players
inventors, who designed commercially useful molecules will have dividends too ?

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Do you have to be an EPA member to propose an idea and have it adopted? Will non-members of the EPA be powerless to effect change? Will all changes have to go through and be approved by the EPA?
As an example, how would this situation be handled? A non-member makes a simple suggestion that a link to Tutorials is added to the Resources Menu? This suggestion seems like it would fall within the confines of your mission statement, but would the player have other options to get this accomplished- other than bribing lfp6;-  What role would the EPA play and what procedures would need to take place? And how would it differ if the suggestion were to come from a member of the EPA?

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@dl2007 I forget how we intended that to work. Let me speak with the other members of the team and we will get back to you. 

@Zama That is a very good question. We have a meeting this Sunday and I will bring that up for us to discuss. Maybe we write in rules that allow non-members to suggest something and then the members vote on it to get it going. Would that sound like a good solution to you?

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Thank you, Jennifer. I look forward to hearing the outcome of your Sunday discussion. On another point- eligibility. What do you consider to be two labs? Would it be two rounds in one lab or two completely different labs (i.e. Crispr and TB)? If it’s the latter, the requirement to be a member for three months is likely unnecessary.

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@dl2007
As it currently stands, this is not provided for.

It‘s difficult to determine who would actually get a stake in any profits, since there is so much sharing that goes on between players. Should one player get a significant portion of money because they made a single mutation to someone else’s base design, and it happened to be the one that got synthesized? There’s some additional tracking that could be done for attribution purposes, but it would never be foolproof and almost certainly easy to game. And this is also completely ignoring things like strategies that might heavily influence a design.

At least personally, I additionally feel that it’s more in the spirit of Eterna for players to be considered and to consider themselves volunteers. We do the work we do because it will have a positive impact on the world, and want whatever comes of our work to be available equitably. This also helps to ensure that the collaborative nature of Eterna is maintained.

The reason for the dividends to participating organizations is a largely pragmatic issue. Personally, my desire would be for all the IP revenue generated to be directly funneled back into the project. And it is still probable that that is exactly what would happen. The issue is more about getting buy in from the academic institutions - they’re giving up the rights to the IP their employees generate (eg, software and some experimental resources) which they would otherwise own, and this would also allow for the potential of additional funding to be funneled back into the research labs that are contributing to Eterna and its research.

This is not to say that players would never have the potential to be rewarded for their work and their IP. It is still possible for a monetary award like the ITI prize or even a portion of the revenue if an “extraordinary” contribution could be confirmed. In addition, as I said it is likely that the majority of the money would wind up going back into the project, and possibly even directly into the control of players if at some point the EPA decides that it is willing to handle money itself, and works with the commons to be given some of the funds. Another possibility is to provide players with money in the form of a scholarship or research fellowship.

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I think that players inventors deserve portion of the revenue in case of commercial use of their molecules, it can be great additional stimulus to players work and can attract many more talented players to Eterna and improve overall Eterna working results, such measure will only underscore open and truly collaborative nature of Eterna.
In case of modding, i think , authorship should be split 50/50 between author of original not modded molecule and aurthor of particular mod.
I hope that you consider my opinion and it will be good for all Eterna project eventually.

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@zama

In response to your question about input from non-member players. The EPA is not replacing the current player/developer communication paths. It is adding an advocacy group for the majority of active players to bring their issues to the Eterna staff. It is also intended to be a path through which the Eterna player-base (both member and non-member) can interact with other organizations if needed. If you are a player of Eterna and you want a feature added or have an issue you should post about it in the getsat as always. It is recommended that you continue to do so since it is the issue tracker for Eterna.

In response to your question about lab rounds it is the number of lab rounds not the number of unique labs.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

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@dl2007 A big issue is that _we have no way to ensure that the original author is known_. There is nothing stopping someone from copying a sequence, modifying a couple bases outside of Eterna, and pasting it back in, bypassing any mechanisms that track the ancestry of a design. While we’d certainly hope that no one would do that maliciously, and would want to properly credit original designers, it is possible that users might do this as a way to get around revenue splits. Beyond that, I know that some players have tools outside of Eterna that they just use as a part of their workflow, so it’s not even attempting to be subversive.

On top of that, I do think it’s a slippery slope that if the potential for royalties is involved, that people are less likely to share (since it is for their own benefit), and it to some degree undermines the point of Eterna as doing the work for the common good. However, these are things you could argue me out of - but there’s no way around the fact that we have no way to ensure proper attribution.

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If you think that royalties is bad idea then probably any prizes or scholarships should be proportional and scaled up to commercial income connected to particular Eterna project and we need exact definition what to count as “extraodinary” contribution.

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Extraordinary contributions would most likely result from extremely difficult projects where a player or group of players do far above the expectation, where the genesis of an algorithm or idea may be easily traced. It’s an unprecedented concept, and I would argue that it’s a difficult to even be able to prove in most cases.

As for prizes and scholarships, I would envision the use of scholarships to fund Eterna players for school, and may be more of a general monetary endowment for educational purposes.

For Eterna players who are interested in spearheading the research (formal development of the protocol, data analysis, writing summaries of the findings, and publishing papers), I would say that it may be possible to have research fellowships that fund the players while they are performing this work. However, there will be expectations of results, and so it won’t be something that every or any player could do. Furthermore, the monetary amounts that would be awarded may not be enough to make the player self-sufficient.

Finally, there is always the possibility that players could be hired to do freelance work with the codebase, or possibly freelancing for graphic design, marketing, or other work related to promotion and development of the site. Again, it’s not going to be something that allowed a player to be self-sufficient, and may be more of a token compensation for their volunteer work.

Ultimately, I agree with LFP6, that we shouldn’t be promising monetary awards for speculative labor. It’s unfair, and while it may drive a sustained player base vying for the chance for pennies worth of money, it will most likely cause more harm in the long run. However, the goal of the Eterna Players Alliance is to act in the best interest of players, and if there is more than a substantial excess amount of money being generated from IP on the site, it may be our prerogative to then bring money back into the site and to players in one form or another. However, I have considerable doubts on that occurring.

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I think you are headed in a interesting direction.
You may want to separate for profit funds from non-profit funds. 
You can do this by creating the alliance that uses for reseach only funding for the eterna platform,
and when you find something that might make a profit, separate it from the basic research 
funding as a new project that pays rent back to the main eterna platform from the owners of the project.
The main eterna platform could be a partner in any of your profits.  
Players would have a choice of which projects to participate and at what ownership level.
I think you may lose reseach funding if the eterna main platform is directed towards for profit projects.