[okfn-discuss] Open Service Definition (revisited)

Fri Aug 3 15:35:26 UTC 2007

On 8/3/07, Saul Albert <saul at theps.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 12:28:25PM +0100, Francis Irving wrote:
> > Rufus - perhaps when Luis has got a bit further and clarified the
> > language and options, we should have a meeting in Cambridge to work
> > out what, if anything, OKFN needs to do?
>
> I'm following this thread with interest, and would be very interested
> in meeting up to talk about it either in Cambridge or London.
>
> Thanks Rufus, Francis, Luis for keeping the thread going. My feeling is
> (as with many OK projects) that practice will have to lead in the end -
> and the definition that works will be one that makes the services that
> use it more operationally functional and profitable.
>
> I know I'm not helping with the line-drawing issues, but services like
> http://freebase.com are interesting in the sense that they're doing
> exactly what an OSD would set out to prevent: relegating freely licensed
> content to an abstract mess of stuff that only makes sense if you can
> get to the service, their metadata, and their APIs etc.
>
> In some ways - these counter examples might be very useful for
> informing the terms of the OSD.

They absolutely are. I've collected some examples (see the bottom of
http://live.gnome.org/FreeOpenServicesDefinition ) already, but those
are mostly positive ones- any other negative ones you've got I'm more
than happy to discuss/look at.

Note that I do agree with the proposed OKFN draft that the goal should
not be to dictate means, but merely to guarantee ends (i.e., crappy
APIs are probably OK as long as they work, privacy policies are
completely not my problem, etc.) so I may not react to freebase as
badly as you do (haven't looked at it yet. :)

Luis