[okfn-discuss] Re: Open Service Definition

Mon Nov 20 11:28:42 UTC 2006

Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote:
> 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?

Yes, I think so. You'd be very welcome to join and the list isn't 
particularly high traffic. You can sign up at:

http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss

> (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.)

I entirely agree with you but as you say the 'full' vision of free 
services requires quite a bit of work on developing technology and 
infrastructure that does not yet exist.

Regards,

Rufus