[okfn-discuss] Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

Tue Jul 1 18:52:14 UTC 2008

On 01/07/08 15:40, Luis Villa wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 4:33 AM, Masayuki Hatta <mhatta at mhatta.org> wrote:
>> Unfortunately, I don't come up with any good candidates -- possibly,
>> OSSD(means the Open SaaS Definition)?  I know it sounds rather bad
>> and/or stupid ;-)
> 
> Maybe SaaOS? (Software as an Open Service?) Not sure where the D goes there.

Hmm, it is not proving easy to get consensus here :)

> Do we have anyone actually using the definition yet? I'm always

If you mean is there anyone out there currently stating "We're compliant 
with the Open Service Definition" then I would guess no but that's 
because ...

> reluctant to call things 1.0 until they've had significant amounts of
> rubber-meeting-road.

I don't think anyone will start using something like this until it 
appears fairly stable -- hence strict adherence to this principle will 
lead to a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Nevertheless, I take your 
point about stuff being used though I would note that the definition has 
seen a good amount of discussion. My impression from those discussions 
is that

a) the core is pretty stable and includes the key features that people 
want to see

b) while there might be some future clarifications these are likely to 
be minor and, as yet, there is no consensus as to what these are (e.g. 
around questions of dependency on external closed libraries, or around 
'identity' -- something I know you've frequently commented on.

Furthermore, I do think there are a fair few services already out there 
/ about to be launched (I know Evan has several items in this category) 
for which the definition is highly relevant and it would be nice to have 
it out there in a form that people were ready to start linking to.

As such I think it not unreasonable to move this to 1.0 to reflect its 
overall maturity and to encourage people to start using -- after all it 
can always be updated to 1.1 (or even 2.0!) in light of future feedback.

Of course if you, or anyone else, have suggestions for mods, big or 
small, right now that they think are needed they would be most welcome!

~rufus