http://petapixel.com/2014/07/29/flickr-takes-on-500px-and-getty-with-new-commercial-licensing-platform/

Most people here will know that the flickr - Getty partnership ended some while ago.

So did they turn you down ?

The missile was launched from an area controlled by Russian separatists. Fact.

Maybe true. Perhaps true. Perhaps even probably true. But where is the actual evidence ? This speculation and vitriol is stupid. Especially on a stock photo discussion site.

If much of that country feels itself to be Russian then surely it would make sense for the Russian parts to be allowed to join Russia. In the spirit of compromise. But what do I know. I just want people to get on. It's a pity they don't have a ceasefire in the region and bring in outside bodies who everyone can trust.

The outcome of the war in Europe was even in doubt until after the D-Day invasion in 1944. Where did you learn history?

D-Day was a remarkable achievement and we should be very grateful to our parents and grandparents for fighting against the Axis.

It is also worth remembering that nearly 9 million Soviet soldiers died defeating the Axis Powers vs less than 500,000 US. Stalingrad was the turning point according to many historians.

could symbios be converted to a coop since it already has a lot of folks on it?

Symbios is software. That's all it is really.

IMO you don't ever want to start with software and see what you can use it for. What you want to do is to work out what it is that you want to do - what the business plan is and how you want it to look - then have someone carefully define what the software is to do - then contract someone to build it ... preferably based on recommendations and their previous work.

There is always going to be a whole lot of other business, legal and social stuff to do before you get to hiring someone to build the right software. And there is the question of how you would fund that investment.

Copyright registration should be resisted IMO since it undermines international UN and WTO agreement. Copyright is protected under international law and convention - most specifically by the Berne Convention.

Strangely though I don't remember it smelling of fresh coffee and sourdough bread there.

Homegrown and socks right ?

Chapter 4

Far to the north there were partisans - bearded artisans and tattooed faeries who had escaped from the forest in brightly colored VWs and on old bicycles.  They lived a simple rustic life in a secret commune which was not on any map and was difficult to find - a tranquil  idle which smelled of fresh coffee and sourdough bread.

I think it was probably a long ago thing which is only kept alive today via keyword copying.

For most potential clients, standalone stock photo sites make no sense - because they inevitably have far too little variety of content - and too much which would have been rejected elsewhere. An exception would be specialist (unique) normally rights managed collections. Or perhaps the collection of somebody with a very large portfolio of high quality stock work. Illustration is a different matter completely.

The Symbiostock software did at least begin to address that issue via site linking. But it did not go far enough. Clients expect to visit what looks and feels like a single well designed site. Even if in reality people manage their own content and contribute their own share of the processing. I am surprised that nobody has set up a turnkey solution built on, say, Amazon's EC2.

I do not believe that Open Source is a good model for this sort of development. Neither on the design or the programming side. There are too few potential users for something like this to work as Open Source. It would need to be contracted according to a schedule and a design. And properly documented.

A business, even something which is distributed, needs to be properly modelled and there needs to be investment in place to fund further development and for all of the legal and contractual work to be done right. And to fund the continued development and security of a system. Photographers should not be their own systems administrators.

Stocksy launched about the same time as the Symbiostock software. Look at the difference.

global search was part of the idea behind symbiostock - and though the project has halted most sites are still active and there are 2 global searches across all symbio sites

http://symbiostock.info
and http://symbiostock-search.com

But both of those sites produce lousy results. The quality just isn't there. Trying search for, say, business team. Compare the results with any microstock site. That is the downside of content which is not curated even by search algorithms.

Symbiostock has not worked so far (regular sales and loyal customers are the test) because it does not have adequate investment or group vision. The individual sites which have done okay (mostly established illustrators) would have done okay, perhaps better, on managed platforms.

The least important thing is writing the actual software. Software practically writes itself when a problem is thoroughly specified from the bottom up. It's the design, the concepts and the model which need to be defined first. Then the contracts and all legal issues. And the whole thing needs to be about a sense of what sort of work should be represented - who the customer is and how the business is being pitched.

A strange thing is that a legitimate sale ... can be found in-use before it's even been reported

That's typical in the world of stock photography given how billing cycles work. It's microstock and the PAYG model which is unusual.

I do a weekly search for our taglines (indexed in the last month) and screen print any uses which I find. Also specific searches for editorial themes which are likely to be current and which I know I have. So far I have not found any uses which were not ultimately reported. I missed one once which was reported on the last day of a month.

Chapter 2.

The shutter stock herd belonged to a pack of wolves who lived in a magic castle on a distant mountain. In the spring the wolves had liked to go down to the forest and watch the silly young deer frolicking in the meadows. The deer loved the kindly wolves and saw only goodness in their faces and heaven in their hearts.

But now the wolves knew that winter would soon been coming. As it did every year. A cold wind was blowing from the east. Soon the grass would stop growing and the stream would freeze over. The deer were plump and there were many young. The wolves licked their lips and smiled.