[okfn-discuss] Open Software Service Definition

Mon Sep 1 18:13:01 UTC 2008

2008/9/1 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>:
> On 30/08/08 23:01, Dave Crossland wrote:
>
> First up: thanks for these excellent comments Dave.

No probs :-)

>>>> 2. Whose source code is:
>>>> A. Free/Open Source Software (that is available under a
>>>>    license in the OSI or FSF approved list
>>
>> This should be boolean AND instead of OR because the FSF and OSI lists
>> diverge slightly; there are some OSI licenses - Artistic License 1.0,
>> NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3, Reciprocal Public License - that the
>> FSF state are non-free.
>>
>> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicense
>> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
>
> Sounds reasonable -- plus those don't seem to be major licenses so them
> getting excluded isn't really going to make anyone unhappy I would imagine

Yes, Fedora confirmed there were 0 programs with these licenses in its
licensing audit last year, as there was some efforts to get Fedora on
the GNU Project's Recommended GNU/Linux Distributions list. I'm not
sure where that is stuck.

>>>> B. Made publicly available."
>>
>> This should be "Made available to its users."
>> Requiring publication is highly contentious.
>
> Having read your links and comments I agree.

:-)

>> More recently, debian-legal have the desert island/dissident tests [1]
>> that, while not as important as the FSF FSD and OSI OSD, are still
>> worth thinking about and should not be disregarded lightly.
>
> Interesting use cases. As you say the change to 'made available to its
> users' would address all of these I think.

Yes :-)

>> My suggestion:
>>
>> An open software service is one:
>>
>> 1. Whose data is open as defined by the open knowledge definition
>> (http://opendefinition.org/1.0/) 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).
>> 2. Whose source code is Free/Open Source as defined by both the FSF
>> and OSI (that is available under a license in the OSI and the FSF
>> approved lists) and is available to the users of the service.
>
> I'm happy with this suggested mod. For the moment it can get wrapped into
> the 'development version' and if there is no subsequent objection :) it will
> go into v1.1.

Thanks! :-)

-- 
Regards,
Dave