Steve Jobs is famous for embracing Pablo Picasso’s quote that “good artists copy, great artists steal” and taken the Xerox interface for Apple’s use, boasting later that “we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
If Steve Jobs did not visit Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) back in 1979. He might never have seen what he almost immediately recognized as the future of personal computing, a graphical user interface PARC had developed, designed to look like a desktop and convert traditional computer command lines and DOS prompts into icons of folders and documents that a user could point to and click open by using something Xerox called a mouse.
Over the last two decades, the web has pushed every creative medium in print, film, music, even art into brand-new territory. Creators can now take non-traditional paths to traditional success, and mainstream industries have stretched to accommodate these new digital economic models. A musician like Chance the Rapper no longer needs a record label to win a Grammy, and a comedians like Bustop Tv can use Facebook and YouTube to land a job producing and starring in videos. And the internet has also allowed for the creation of new types of cultural products, even as we struggle to recognize them as such.
During the earliest days of business building, entrepreneurs know they are vulnerable. They’ve heard the stories. Yes, there is competition everywhere, but nothing is worse than thinking your best ideas will be usurped by the very people you turn to for financial support. I’d like to give you assurances that your business plan won’t circulate among potential industry competitors, but I can’t. It happens.
Zindi is a platform that develops and curates online competitions (“Competitions”) that source and promote the best data science solutions to Africa’s most pressing problems, this is according to their website. Zindi has a number of competitions and the prices range from $USD500 –USD$12000.
You may be fooled to thinking that Zinda is here to help Africa startups, but the company is here to steal that one great idea.
According to the company’s terms of use , If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the final ranking, you will be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification and you thereby agree to assign all worldwide rights of copyright in and to such winning solution to Zindi.
We Own The Winning Solutions
If your data science solution receives a Competition prize (“winning solution”) , you shall be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification and you hereby agree to assign all worldwide rights of copyright in and to such winning solution to Zindi (and/or the Host User, as nominated by us) with effect from the date of the submission.
The Entrant User hereby waives any moral rights in and to the winning solution code (including but not limited to any rights to claim authorship of the code and any rights to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of the code) in favour of Zindi (or the Host User, as nominated by Zindi) and Zindi’s successors in title.
The Entrant User warrants that the winning solution code is original, that it doesn’t infringe the rights of any third party and that the Entrant User is legally entitled to assign ownership of all rights of copyright in and to the winning solution code to Zindi (or the Host User, as nominated by Zindi).
This a daylight robbery to the last degree. Its like selling that one great idea for $1000.
