[open-government] [euopendata] [psi-workers] Rules + website for Open Data Challenge

Federico Morando federico.morando at polito.it
Thu Mar 24 14:58:56 UTC 2011 

Dear All,

I perfectly understand the point of those who advocate open apps, and 
this would be perfectly fine if it was just OKF to organize the contest, 
but this is a wider initiative, including several stakeholders and 
trying to elicit various kinds of submissions, including submission from 
commercial software developers, if they like to participate. Of course, 
we may have ad hoc prizes and categories, but - in general - what needs 
to be open are the data and not the apps.

As an example, see the rules of some other contests, eg. 
http://www.ottawa.ca/online_services/opendata/contest_rules_en.html#2:

    /4.4 Your Application must be hosted and publicly available on your
    website or a third-party website as of the start of the Selection
    Period up to and including the end of the Selection Period for
    public voting and judging purposes. The City encourages you to
    maintain your application for a period of 6 months following the
    Contest Period. Contest Winners, in consideration of being selected
    as a Contest winner, must agree to make their winning Application
    publicly available for three months after the date the release [...]/

    /4.5 You retain ownership of your Application and are permitted to
    sell the use of your Application commercially after the Contest
    Period if you choose to do so. /

Since we need visibility, we can ask for open access to the apps, as 
above, for a certain period of time. I think this is what we should 
"require". We may suggest to do more, of course, but I would not put 
this "more" as a formal requirement..

My two cents,

Federico


On 03/24/2011 03:06 PM, MD wrote:
> Am 24.03.2011 13:36, schrieb Thomas Roessler:
>> On 24 Mar 2011, at 13:32, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>
>>> Re: open source + open data in apps, what about 'we strongly encourage
>>> entrants to use open licenses for code, content and data'?
>>
>> I don't think we should require open source licenses for the apps (or 
>> make this part of the evaluation) -- in fact, if somebody came up 
>> with something that's productized and sold later on, we should 
>> welcome that.
>
> I beg to differ. We should think very hard whether we want to actively 
> prevent reuse of the results (=useful software code) of an OKF 
> competition.
>
> Maybe I am mistaken as I joined OKF only recently, but for 
> myunderstanding OKF would shoot itself and its mission in the foot if 
> we do not -require- reusability of the competition results through 
> open source licensing. If OKF wants that a lot of data will become 
> open and actively (re)used, why should we ever selfimpose a limit on 
> the creation and availability of tools to do exactly that? From that 
> POV, I even think it is of strategic importance to OKF's mission.
>
> Somebody may object and say that we hinder companies to participate 
> because we kill the for-profit motivation. Well, no, we do not. :-) 
> This is the general argument brought forward, but the very existence 
> of heaps of open source software, wikipedia and many other 
> collaboratively created digital resources prove the opposite: digital 
> stuff gets created if enough people have an interest in it. And I am 
> very confident that there are people out there with an interest to 
> (re)use open data..
>
> Finally, from a legal perspective every participant is the copyright 
> holder of the software submitted. They are completely free in 
> licensing the same piece of software in another way and sell it (so 
> called 'dual-licensing'). Yet, plenty of companies do exist today that 
> live from offering full services aruond FOSS web tools (e.g., typo3, 
> joomla etc.)
>
> This, however, is a competition run by OKF to further the mission of 
> OKF. Therefore we need to require open licensing for all submissions.
>
> IMO, at least. :-)
>
>
>> At the same time I do think we need to say something about the data 
>> used:  For example, I don't think we're looking for an app that 
>> required 1M EUR upfront investment to acquire the data.
>>
>>> J.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Federico Morando
>>> <federico.morando at polito.it>  wrote:
>>>> On 03/24/2011 01:08 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Some key ideas for rules:
>>>>>
>>>>> * Pan-European angle is strongly encouraged
>>>>
>>>> I surely agree. We may even say that you should use data from at 
>>>> least 2
>>>> member states and/or that your app shoul make sense in at least two 
>>>> member
>>>> states (e.g. in London and Paris).
>>>>>
>>>>> * Entries for apps must come from team which contains 
>>>>> groups/individuals
>>>>> from at least 2 EU member states
>>>>
>>>> I don't think that this is necessary: let's put constraints on the 
>>>> apps/data
>>>> (as you did above and below) and not on the 
>>>> institution/organization/group
>>>> that proposes them... It's a call for apps, not a EU project ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>> * Repurposed apps are allowed (i.e. an app that exists for London 
>>>>> can be
>>>>> expanded to work for Paris + Torino and entered)
>>>>
>>>> OK, sure!
>>>>>
>>>>> * Apps must be open source
>>>>> * Core data must be freely reusable and derived data must be openly
>>>>> licensed
>>>>
>>>> I'm not entirely sure: we may say that this is a plus in the 
>>>> evaluation, but
>>>> is it a requirement? What needs to the open are the public data (in 
>>>> input),
>>>> not necessarily the code/data of the re-users ("derived data")...
>>>> [Personally, I'm sympathetic with this rule - in particular the 
>>>> part about
>>>> open source code: it's just that I think it deserves an explicit 
>>>> and open
>>>> discussion.]
>>>>
>>>> Thanks and best regards,
>>>>
>>>> Federico
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Jonathan Gray
>>>
>>> Community Coordinator
>>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>>> http://blog.okfn.org
>>>
>>> http://twitter.com/jwyg
>>> http://identi.ca/jwyg
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> euopendata mailing list
>>> euopendata at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/euopendata
>>>
>>
>>
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>> open-government at lists.okfn.org
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>

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