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

Thu Apr 3 13:42:36 UTC 2014

Thank you Erik!

Actually I am really happy about your initial e-mail, because this started
a good discussion!

Well, what is community and how to involve the community? I do not have THE
answer. What we will try to do is to do exactly what is happening right
here. Your hints and your experience is really helpful. There are really
good people in the EU project team, but we need the input from people in
different countries with different background.

I see your points and there is certainly the risk that this EU project will
fail because of similar issues. Some thoughts:

- the project is currently run by 4 universities and 2 SMEs
- we also have policy and legal work packages that address these concerns
- costs and sustainability are certainly an issue
- we get some external support for the hosting for the initial phase
(hosting is not covered by the EU project) but once we have traffic, this
means costs
- we are asked by the commission to include a business plan to make this
independent and sustainable. Of course, this will rather go into a social
entrepreneurship direction, but still, something has to come in someday to
keep it running. We are currently thinking of models like in the Linux
world (RedHat, Ubuntu) but we are really grateful for any ideas or links to
successful projects!!!
- being open means also that we will somehow include commercial partners if
they want (even though we will strongly push open access publishing). So if
a publisher wants to link premium content (whatever this will be in the
future), then why not. Still, the core will be open.

Looking forward to your ideas!

Best, Clemens

2014-04-03 15:05 GMT+02:00 JOSEFSSON Erik <erik.josefsson at europarl.europa.eu
>:

>  Everybody wants to "involve the community", but what does that mean in
> practice?
>
>
>
> I am sorry I let old frustrations spill over on your project, but legal
> matters matters in the start-up phase since it signals where you want to
> go, who you want to work with and where you hope there will be uptake.
>
>
>
> We have AT4AM as a tragic example of where despite the clear legal advice
> from FSFE on licencing[0], the EP still did not trust the warnings from the
> few people who were the drivers behind the release of the source in the
> first place. Additionally, when one Swedish NGO was able to run AT4AM on
> their own server[1], the development on the EP side was terminated.
>
>
>
> Another example is the Citizens Initiative platform where the Commission
> was happy to talk the talk, but was unable to walk the walk.
>
>
>
> The folks behind http://europarl.me are still struggling with issues
> regarding private companies having privileged access to raw data. Parltrack
> and memopol were built with, and as a result of, community efforts. There
> are many projects needing helping hands to make those tools deliver even
> more functionality to the community that created them.
>
>
>
> I'd love to see some reach out to people that has actually already built
> real applications.
>
>
>
> Best regards.
>
>
>
> //Erik
>
>
>
> [0] http://www.epfsug.eu/blog-entry/delivering-vision-at4am-all
>
> [1] https://at4am.eu/pipermail/at4am/2013-June/000064.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Clemens Wass [mailto:clemens at wass.at]
> *Sent:* 03 April 2014 14:24
> *To:* Francis Davey
> *Cc:* Jörn Erbguth; JOSEFSSON Erik; open-legislation
> *Subject:* Re: [Open-Legislation] openlaws.eu EU Project starting today
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> thank you for sharing your thoughts!
>
>
>
> @Sander: yes, the idea is really to involve the community to a very large
> extent right from the beginning. This means that not everything is ready or
> perfect. Actually I am happy that we already have a project website...
>
>
>
> @Francis: great, thx for this information. We have two partners from the
> UK on board, because of the excellent UK databases. Same for Austria. In
> Austria we have all legislation in the database. On an Austrian state level
> laws are even electronically published in a binding/authentical way (here
> the print version is only a copy; not yet for the federal states). Case law
> for the high courts is quite ok, but not everything is published. Currently
> only state law is available as open data (therefore we will run a standard
> search engine to somehow integrate the rest).
>
>
>
> We have a new App for Austrian law in the pipeline. The current version we
> have is a little slow and not really user-friendly... I'll keep you up to
> date on this.
>
>
>
> Regarding the project itself: The idea is really to integrate several open
> legal databases and provide tools so that people can better organize and
> work with that content. This will include linking, highlighting, creating
> personal folders, etc. This way we try to get some more metadata which then
> can be analyzed. Our internal capacities are rather limited, but I really
> hope that by providing open interfaces etc, the community will also use the
> platform to link additional databases (which is quite some effort) and to
> provide additional modules.
>
>
>
> Apart from the ICT platform we will also come up with a policy
> recommendation for DG Justice. What could open mean in the legal world?
> Towards more transparency, collaboration, participation...
>
>
>
> I would be really grateful for any comment, either on a technological or
> on a policy level! So please send your ideas and share it with the rest of
> the mailing list. The sooner the better. If before April 12, I will be
> happy to take it to the kick-off for discussion!
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Clemens
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 2014-04-02 22:36 GMT+02:00 Francis Davey <fjmd1a at gmail.com>:
>
> 2014-04-02 21:04 GMT+01:00 Jörn Erbguth <joern at erbguth.net>:
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> We have a publicly available database of court decisions (www.bailii.org)
> run by an industry-funded charity. It is very much not open and its
> existence make it much more difficult to make real progress on making the
> underlying data open.
>
>
>
> --
> Francis Davey
>
>
>
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