On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Peter Gervai <grinapo+ripeatlas@gmail.com> wrote:

Exactly my point. Unless the probes don't consume significantly more
resources it's there to help connectivity. If someone wants to provide
a service then s/he must constantly generate credits which results
more probes to be available for me. It causes me no harm if someone
earns money while providing me resources.

And while Stephane makes money, the system is being strengthened, to my advantage. I assume the new commercial offering will need, and hence place, probes in Africa as well, which I will use, for free!

However as others mentioned it strongly requires a well balanced
credit system to prevent large volume users (be they commercial or
not) to consume too much resource, and to prevent small individual
probe owners from starving by not being able to provide enough credits
to be able to make their own measurements.

The number of credits I get is not affected by what Stephane uses, right? And Stephane had better create as many credits as are required by customers. So it in the commercial entities self-interest to go sponsor more probes, and keep them online.

Basically that's the same as open source / open content economy:
commercial insterests have to provide resources to the others in
exchange of their (smaller) resources. (Probably there should be some
requirement to assure topologically well distributed probes from mass
users.)

The first service to use Atlas probably will not be well balanced, but the next few can. After all, there is nothing to stop me stealing^Wbeing inspired by the current proposal, and implementing it for Asia.

Adam Smith was right, the baker and the butcher feed me by being selfish.

--
Sanjeev Gupta
+65 98551208 http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane