[Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today

Wed Apr 2 20:04:24 UTC 2014

Dear Clemens,

I tend to agree - criticizing that not everything is based on open standards
since day 1 seems a bit hypercritic.

However preliminary solutions tend to persist and I know more than one
project that claimed to be open but in fact stuck to at first preliminary
proprietary solutions till the end. I think that Eriks mail could serve you
as a good reminder not to do that.

Good luck with your project!

Best regards

Jörn

Von: open-legislation [mailto:open-legislation-bounces at lists.okfn.org] Im
Auftrag von Clemens Wass
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 2. April 2014 21:59
An: JOSEFSSON Erik
Cc: open-legislation
Betreff: Re: [Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today

Dear Erik,

what is your point?

I understand that you get angry by reading the word Google. I agree that
Google is NOT the solution. What we do is to provide a Google Custom Search
for a few selected legal domains as a quick and - in your eyes VERY - dirty
solution FOR THE BEGINNING. I would prefer to have a solar/lucene/nutch
solution running by today that has built a huge index already. But this is
day 2.

I know many legal experts who are using Google because the search
capabilities of the national database are not sufficient. They teach that
even at university in legal research courses. Is your suggestion to take
that search down immediately?

Regarding licenses: Again, this is day 2. We have no software yet. We have
not defined yet which tools we will use for building the platform. The
software will be licensed accordingly under an open source license. I am
sorry I cannot say more at the moment, but why do you doubt that?

We are trying to build a system based on open source software, open
innovation and open data. What is wrong with that?

There has not a lot been going on on this mailing list since quite a while
and I think this a positive signal for open legislation. I hope that there
will be a productive discussion and all suggestions are highly welcome.

So Eric, what are your suggestions?

Best, Clemens

2014-04-02 21:17 GMT+02:00 JOSEFSSON Erik
<erik.josefsson at europarl.europa.eu>:

Congratulations to a dead born baby*.

There is no information *whatsoever* on the website on which licence you
release source code under, if at all.

There is a confident reference to the Commission's "Open Innovation 2.0"
which according to its own website is " "a mash-up of ideas into action to
make things happen".

Good luck.

//Erik

* Please note that during our start-up phase we are currently using a Google
Custom Search engine for the meta search. As the project evolves, we will
integrate more “open” solutions.

From: open-legislation [mailto:open-legislation-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On
Behalf Of Clemens Wass
Sent: 01 April 2014 15:10
To: open-legislation
Subject: [Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today

Dear all,

today is the official starting date for the openlaws.eu project, an EU
Project funded by DG Justice.

The project is about making legislation and case law more accessible for
citizens, businesses, legal experts and also public bodies and legal
publishers. The project is built on open data, open innovation principles
and open source software.

The initial term for the project is 24 months. It was ranked #1 by DG
Justice, so expectations are certainly high! Hopefully we will see the first
results soon!

Have a look at the openlaws.eu website for more details (www.openlaws.eu)
and follow the project on twitter (https://twitter.com/openlaws, @openlaws).
Comments and ideas are highly welcome!

Best,

Clemens

PS: This is not an April Fools' Day joke - law IS finally opening up!

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