[okfn-discuss] Re: Open Service Definition

Sat Nov 18 01:01:05 UTC 2006

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:18:23 +0000, Francis Irving wrote:
> Hmmm, I'm going to get myself into a mess here. Because as soon as you
> go along this route, you exclude yourself from using any external API
> calls. e.g. Taking credit card transactions, or calling out to a
> travel agency API to buy tickets. Which would make much of the open
> service software useless, only allowing self contained stuff like
> office suites. Which would be bad.
> 
> This needs quite some careful though, starting from goals again.
> 
> Did you have some sort of drafting process for the Open Knowledge
> Definition?

I'm afraid I don't have a lot to add to the discussion --- Francis and
Rufus, you've brought up most of the things I'd think are relevant ---
but I just wanted to say I'd like to follow where it goes in the
future.  Are you planning to have those discussions on the
okfn-discuss list?

(The only tidbit, I think, is that there's still an enormous practical
difference between the leverage available to an "owner" of a service
that's "open" in the sense you've been discussing --- that given
sufficient effort, you could reduplicate it elsewhere --- and the
leverage available to the "owner" of free software that provides
services to you by running on your own computer.  But I don't have the
impression that you're trying to define an equivalent of free software
for services, exactly, but something feasible without new technology.)