[okfn-help] Licenses in CKAN

Tue May 5 11:31:00 BST 2009

2009/5/5 John Bywater <john.bywater at appropriatesoftware.net>:
> Rufus Pollock wrote:
>> Before commenting on the specific points I should say that for a while
>> I've been thinking we should have a dedicated "licenses" module
>> (code/text) that we can reuse across a bunch of projects and that
>> lists the compliant licenses and provides generic extra headings (e.g.
>> for non-open stuff). It would probably look something like:
>>
>> <http://knowledgeforge.net/ckan/svn/ckan/trunk/ckan/model/license.py>
>>
>
> It would make more sense to establish an OPEN HOST SERVICE for licenses
> (see p374 of Domain Driven Design).
>
> http://codeidol.com/csharp/domain-driven-design/Maintaining-Model-Integrity/Open-Host-Service/
>
> Just put an REST interface over the model, like with the CKAN API...

I take your point but I'm not really sure about whether that is needed
here. Maintaining a "service" involves a whole extra layer of effort
and the primary use for this list is integration into other services.
As such the RESTful web service model might be overkill compared to
just grabbing/integrating a single file or module.

Of course in the long run we could look to have some "core" license
information served out via several "interfaces" -- web service, simple
file download, scm integration etc.

Regards,

Rufus