[od-discuss] OSSD disposition

Fri Jun 14 02:21:12 UTC 2013

Rufus Pollock wrote in
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/od-discuss/2013-February/000318.html
> I think this takes us back to the discussion in December re keeping
> OSSD prominent or deprecating it somewhat. Having thought about this
> I'm +1 on putting OSSD somewhat on the back burner and having the
> site, and our efforts, focus on the O(K)D for the current term.

That's more or less what's been done; the only way to find
http://opendefinition.org/software-service via the site is a button in
the sidebar. The only thing that has been done in a long time is the
addition of a Bulgarian translation (of the definition; most of the
page is other notes). The page is kind of ugly (and my guess has
degenerated through changes in hosting; eg I'm pretty sure point 2
should have two sub-points rather than there being 3 and 4).

I'm not thrilled with this for various reasons:
* personal interest
* my more rant-oriented self has said something like "To minimize the
need to make expensive evaluations and compromises, open data needs to
be cheap, preferably a side-effect of business as usual. Cheapness
requires automation requires software requires open source software,
otherwise “open data” institutions are themselves not transparent, are
hostage to “enterprise software” companies, and are severely
constrained in their ability to help each other, and to be helped by
their publics." :-)
* I'm happy to see recent news giving people second thoughts about
legacy silos eg http://prism-break.org but I think non-Open *public*
content as a centralizing force is also important; perhaps a too
subtle point at this juncture

But I acknowledge there isn't much interest in working on the OSSD
here, and nothing remotely like the concentration of expertise here
like there is on PSI and other domains of open knowledge. There also
doesn't seem to be much interest in formally deprecating or handing
off the OSSD.

In light of all this, how about this plan for the current term:
* Continue with non-prominence of the OSSD on the site
* I'll prepare a minor update which just makes the page more
presentable and send here for confirmation
* Participants may or may not wish to re-evaluate in the next term (eg
a new chair in 2014, or some other definition of "term")

We can discuss this, probably very briefly, on Friday's call using a
non-OSSD-compliant service. }:-)

Mike