[open-government] Yes, Microsoft OGDI is open source

Fri Jul 22 15:26:44 UTC 2011

Rufus,

You make good points.  Seeing that components of OGDI are open source and
others are not.  Would it be appropriate to break the questions into
component parts, ie API and hardware?  Or to ask a clarifying question about
whether components open, proprietary, or both? It would seem more clear and
dare I say transparent.

Thanks
Brian

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 4:31 AM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>wrote:

> On 21 July 2011 00:05, Philip Ashlock <phil at openplans.org> wrote:
> > I was looking over the edit history for the Data Platforms Survey (an
> open
> > google doc) on the Data Platforms page of the wiki
> > (http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Data_Platform) and noticed that the Yes/No
> > field for whether a project was open source had been changed from Yes to
> No
> > for Microsoft OGDI.
> >
> > I figured it was worth making a point to change that back and comment on
> it
> > as to dispel the assumption and stereotype. Microsoft OGDI (Open
> Government
> > Data Initiative) is in fact open source software released under the
> > Microsoft Public License which is an OSI approved Open Source License.
> >
> > http://ogdi.codeplex.com/
> > http://www.opensource.org/licenses/MS-PL
>
> The point I would make here is that while the API (and client software
>  on ogdi.codeplex.com) is open source the underlying platform which
> does all the heavy lifting and storage (as I understand it) is not
> open source.
>
> The question I would ask then is how functional is this platform
> without the azure backend -- can you plug it into an open source
> backend and have it function.
>
> I think you are raising here an important question as to what makes a
> 'platform' open source. In my opinion, I don't think that an "open"
> API and open source client implementations make something open source
> (when most of the 'hard' work is in the backend). I think the test
> here should be: are all the major (or even all) the components needed
> to run this open source?
>
> > I'm cross posting this to Civic Commons Discuss and the OKFN Open Gov
> list
> > because the culprit is on one and not the other. Not that I'm going to
> name
> > names, Rufus, ;)
>
> I would stand by this assessment based on my present understanding of
> how Azure and OGDI work. I'd of course be happy to stand corrected if
> one can do a useful deployment of the open source components of the
> OGDI framework without using Azure (and specifically Azure's db
> storage layer which I understand is specialized to SQL Server).
>
> > Not that I don't think CKAN is the leading open source player in this
> space,
> > I just want us to be respectful and acknowledge that there's room for
> many
> > in the ecosystem.
>
> Just to be absolutely clear: I completely agree and believe there are
> already other open source options in this ecosystem (e.g. the
> dataverse system) and I think it is great that Microsoft are doing so
> much here -- both on open data and on tools. However, based on my
> understanding so far of how the OGDI 'platform' as one would
> practically deploy it I do not think it is open source.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rufus
>
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