[od-discuss] licenses.opendefinition.org related questions

Tue Jun 4 22:29:30 UTC 2013

In preparation for preparing for upcoming telecon, I looked over and
cleaned up some of the issues reported at
https://github.com/okfn/opendefinition/issues and
https://github.com/okfn/licenses/issues

Most of the open ones have to do with enhancing
licenses.opendefinition.org or merging in whole or only in source
repository with opendefinition.org. Nearest thing to an overarching
issue for this is https://github.com/okfn/opendefinition/issues/5

Some comment-questions, some for OKF people, some for anyone interested:

* Does anyone rely on the specific json published at
licenses.opendefinition.org? This may say something about how careful
to be.

* is_okd_compliant and is_osi_compliant seem suboptimal names. OKD and
OSI aren't equivalents and "compliant" is vague; only "approved" would
be unambiguous. Can these be changed? Noticed via
https://github.com/okfn/licenses/pull/12

* What does domain_content/data/software actually mean? Whatever the
license creator says? What informed wisdom agrees with? What people
do? What bodies have approved licenses? Noticed via
https://github.com/okfn/licenses/pull/15

* If UK OGL is really intended to be used with software -- also via
https://github.com/okfn/licenses/pull/15 -- should we not be
recommending vetting by OSI? And/or depending on the meaning of
"domain" per above, maybe not marking it as a software license.

* How are versions expected to be reflected in json published at
licenses.opendefinition.org? Right now, they aren't. If were used in
building a chooser, as suggested on the site, what would choosing say

* What are the 3 "other" licenses in
http://licenses.opendefinition.org/#all-licenses about? I can't figure
out why their compliance statuses are listed as they are.

* It seems a pity to not use the same short identifiers as
https://spdx.org/licenses/ ... and probably easier, to link to the
spdx page for each license.

* I think it'd be grand to get opendefinition.org out of wordpress,
but not a pressing need. Anyone eager to do the work?

* Could opendefinition.org be made unambiguously open again?
https://github.com/okfn/opendefinition/issues/12 :-/

Mike