[okfn-discuss] Open Service Definition (revisited)

Tue Aug 7 15:32:05 UTC 2007

Luis Villa wrote:
> On 7/27/07, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:
>> Draft of an Open Service Definition
>> ===================================
>>
>> An open service is one:
>>
>>    1. Whose data is open as defined by the open knowledge definition
>> (http://opendefinition.org/) though with the exception that where the
>> data is personal in nature the data need only be made available to the
>> user (i.e. the owner of that account).
> 
> I think I know the answer to this one, but I want to double-check: is
> this intended to exclude services which depend on third-party,
> non-OKD-compliant data sources? For example, if I built a geodata
> service which was otherwise completely data and source available, but
> used google maps to display some data to users, would that be
> compliant with the definition?

This is a thorny issue. There are obviously two options here:

1. (strong) A Service X is 'open' if and only if *all* 
material/knowledge it uses in delivering the service is 'open' (i.e. 
both all data and all code).

2. (weak) A Service X is 'open' if all material/knowledge (code and 
data) provided by the runners of the service themselves is open (but any 
third party material is not).

Personally I incline towards the first definition since I feel the 
'exception' in 2 can made so wide as to render the definition valueless. 
  Sure this may then mean that a few services that are 99% open but used 
a closed data source for some small item would be excluded but that's 
the way with drawing a line -- you always have to draw it somewhere.

This also has some analogies with packaging efforts such as debian: all 
of the core has to be 'free' but they do allow users to plug in 
'non-free' components (such as video card drivers or other proprietary 
libraries). The same thing could happen here with the providers of open 
services leaving it up to users to plug in closed stuff to their 
particular installation.

>>    2. Whose source code is F/OSS and *is made available*.
> 
> Similar question: if the service uses a non-F/OSS browser plugin
> (e.g., Flash) or runs on a non-F/OSS OS or system service (e.g.,
> Windows or Oracle) does that prevent it from being an open service,
> assuming all other aspects (source, data) are open?
> 
> Luis (struggling with these line-drawing issues myself)

Well I think again this goes back to the debian analogy. If you provide 
a system that has an essential non-open component (whether in the form 
of code or data) then that system is *not* open. If the item is an 
optional add-on then I think you are ok. So, for example, firefox is 
definitely open source even though the flash plugin may be proprietary 
(though if the flash plugin became absolutely essential to using firefox 
this might start to be debatable).

Regards,

Rufus