AprilDLCooperationPost

As the creator of the Outbound Index and Mail Cruncher, I would encourage a discussion of the ethical and intellectual property issues with fellow members of this forum.

I created Mail Cruncher as a demonstration of the usefulness of the Outbound Index, and because we needed an effective way for our own users to deal with spam without losing wanted mail.

Mail Cruncher is just a user interface for compressing the time spent per day separating wanted / unwanted into one time block, as short as possible, with minimal clicking. The design goal assumes that

• no ISP or anti-spam method can know what the recipient wants, thus give the recipient the opportunity to recover items s/he wants, once a day so that not too much time passes from an important message arriving.

Mail Cruncher is independent of what anti-spam method is used to tag, flag or sort the mail to a quarantine or bulk folder. It's just intended as a useful user interface to the bulk folder. As such, the useful elements we have contributed to quarantine management are likely to be incorporated into existing and future quarantine systems.

I do envision Mail Cruncher in PHP and/or hopefully the most efficient platform. I prototyped in Cold Fusion because that is my native language, but I always envisioned migration to other languages by other programmers.

Possibly the discussion here is really about the Outbound Index business trust ratings rather than the Mail Cruncher as a user interface. I'm the creator of the Outbound Index as well, or the universe working through me, is the creator, along with at least thousands of programmers who came before me, supplying the tools that I have used to create this.

I believe that one of our (people here on earth's) greatest challenges is to figure out how to learn to work together in the creation of and bringing to market of ideas that will help the world move forward positively.

I don't agree with people who are horrified by profit or business - someone like me, a single mother with no inheiritance, cannot produce useful practical products and services while focusing on basic survival like how do I feed and clothe my son or get healthcare for myself.

While I myself went through the process to get a patent for HARDWARE in 1990-5, I do not believe that ideas of all nature, especially those built on the work of thousands, should always depend on litigation for business potential or defense. Litigation also advantages the bigco with endless $ for legal team and prevents the entrepreneur with useful ideas for the world from effectively competing - or even being able to bring their product/service to market - even in the software / internet world.

What does it mean for the good-of-the-world, when investors are reluctant to fund the commercialization of a practical and useful tool, because others may "steal" it or litigate it out of existence? I think it means that the ideas that would help the world, surface, and then are frozen and prevented from doing their good work.

This is a puzzle we as earth inhabitants may need to work through. I don't say that I have the answer, but I am open to the answer.

• April Lorenzen