[open-government] Yes, Microsoft OGDI is open source

Fri Jul 22 10:31:57 UTC 2011

On 21 July 2011 00:05, Philip Ashlock <phil at openplans.org> wrote:
> I was looking over the edit history for the Data Platforms Survey (an open
> google doc) on the Data Platforms page of the wiki
> (http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Data_Platform) and noticed that the Yes/No
> field for whether a project was open source had been changed from Yes to No
> for Microsoft OGDI.
>
> I figured it was worth making a point to change that back and comment on it
> as to dispel the assumption and stereotype. Microsoft OGDI (Open Government
> Data Initiative) is in fact open source software released under the
> Microsoft Public License which is an OSI approved Open Source License.
>
> http://ogdi.codeplex.com/
> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/MS-PL

The point I would make here is that while the API (and client software
 on ogdi.codeplex.com) is open source the underlying platform which
does all the heavy lifting and storage (as I understand it) is not
open source.

The question I would ask then is how functional is this platform
without the azure backend -- can you plug it into an open source
backend and have it function.

I think you are raising here an important question as to what makes a
'platform' open source. In my opinion, I don't think that an "open"
API and open source client implementations make something open source
(when most of the 'hard' work is in the backend). I think the test
here should be: are all the major (or even all) the components needed
to run this open source?

> I'm cross posting this to Civic Commons Discuss and the OKFN Open Gov list
> because the culprit is on one and not the other. Not that I'm going to name
> names, Rufus, ;)

I would stand by this assessment based on my present understanding of
how Azure and OGDI work. I'd of course be happy to stand corrected if
one can do a useful deployment of the open source components of the
OGDI framework without using Azure (and specifically Azure's db
storage layer which I understand is specialized to SQL Server).

> Not that I don't think CKAN is the leading open source player in this space,
> I just want us to be respectful and acknowledge that there's room for many
> in the ecosystem.

Just to be absolutely clear: I completely agree and believe there are
already other open source options in this ecosystem (e.g. the
dataverse system) and I think it is great that Microsoft are doing so
much here -- both on open data and on tools. However, based on my
understanding so far of how the OGDI 'platform' as one would
practically deploy it I do not think it is open source.

Regards,

Rufus