[okfn-be] presentation

Sat Dec 17 07:16:29 UTC 2011

> (copyright) and the rights on the database. The texts as such are
> not protected by copyright, because official acts of the government
> are exempted from copyright under the Belgian legislation.

Yep, someone at NURPA got this information officially confirmed by ppl
from the senat and from la chambre.

> I would say that indeed you'd be quite safe with legislative
> documents etc., as it is most generally accepted that they should be
> openly available, so why not just keep doing it and wait until they
> complain?

After talking with dudes of RegardsCitoyens (http://nosdeputes.fr &&
http://nossenateurs.fr) the standard protocol is "just don't care
about the licence of the website, this should be in the public domain
anyway (if they complain no ones will follow them), put the licence you
want on the resulting datas" which will probably be odbl.

So yes, I'm going to do just like as you've suggested :)

Here is a first dirty version of the result of my work:
http://dieren.vnurpa.ethylix.be

Please take in account that:
- this is in very early stage of development, stability isn't
  guaranteed and bug are part of the game
- this isn't really official
- this is only my personal initiative (for the moment), not NURPA's
  one or any other
- yes, there will be a real API (probably a RESTful one, it's hype)
  once I've coded it (or someone else once I've released the code
  which will be in a very near future), the ugly textarea are just
  here to display the available data

Also, since lachambre.be randomly 404 for a variable period of time
I've started to parse the laws pdfs. I've got promising result
(already rebuild the abstract and the resume paragraph) but this will
require more work, especially to work with every pdfs.

-- 

Laurent Peuch -- Bram