gmane.org.misc.open-knowledge-foundation.general

OKF on Twitter

Jonathan Gray — 2008-09-05T14:08:45

For all you Twitter users out there, the OKF has now got an account... http://twitter.com/okfn J.

New open science mailing list

Jonathan Gray — 2008-09-05T12:20:21

Hi all, After discussions with Cameron Neylon and Kaitlin Thaney, I've set up a new open science mailing list: http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/open-science I've blogged about this here: http://blog.okfn.org/2008/09/05/new-open-science-mailing-list/ We'd really like to get as much of the open science community on this as possible, so please blog and forward as appropriate! Jonathan

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Thorsten Glaser — 2008-09-04T18:02:18

Dave Crossland dixit: Thanks, that sounds great. bye, //mirabilos

Nature Special: Big Data

Jonathan Gray — 2008-09-04T14:13:07

Nature special on big data, including politics of environmental data sharing and Cory Doctorow on big data centres (including Sanger, archive.org,..)... http://www.nature.com/news/specials/bigdata/index.html Jonathan

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Dave Crossland — 2008-09-04T11:30:44

2008/9/1 Rufus Pollock public.gmane.org>: Based on the discussion with Thorsten, I change my suggestion slightly: 1. Whose data is open as defined by the open knowledge definition (http://opendefinition.org/1.0/) with the exception that where the data is personal in nature the data need only be made available to the user (i.e. the owner of that account). 2. Whose source code is Free/Open Source, as defined by both the FSF Free Software Definition and OSI Open Source Definition and is available to the users of the service. (The FSF and OSI maintain example lists of licenses that meet their definitions)

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Dave Crossland — 2008-09-04T11:22:34

2008/9/4 Thorsten Glaser public.gmane.org>: Hahaha yes you are quite right. How silly of me. Hmm. The problem with boolean-OR for the lists is that it means the FSF doesn't trust it, because its includes non-free licenses. Okay, again: :-) Definitions have ambiguity. When writing a definition, it is good to limit ambiguity. A definer typically writes an approved example list to reduce ambiguity. A list is finite, which is how they reduce ambiguity. Therefore when writing a definition that depends on one other definition, it is better to refer to list instead of the lists' parent definition. Second best is to refer to the list, and mention the definition in case the list isn't long enough. But if a definition depends on more than one other definition, lists have conflicts (licenses in one but not the other). Therefore when writing a definition that depends on two or more definitions, it is better to refer to the definitions with boolean ANDs, and mention the lists to so

Worldcat

Iain Emsley — 2008-09-04T08:25:04

Ive just been made aware of the Worldcat: http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence/registry on one of the kid's literature lists I'm on which outlines copyright evidence that has been added to books. Looks nascent at the moment but might be useful for any searching the out of copyright or openness of a text and appears to be user generated. Iain -- Iain Emsley Blog: www.yatterings.com Mobile: 07942 259725

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Thorsten Glaser — 2008-09-04T06:29:02

Dave Crossland dixit: This is, since AND means it must be approved by both. The natural language “and/or” would be what you want, I think. Maybe point to the OSI list, but add a list of “should be in the OSI list” licences to an explanatory page? //mirabilos

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Dave Crossland — 2008-09-03T19:31:49

2008/9/3 Thorsten Glaser public.gmane.org>: Sorry, I'll try again: Definitions have ambiguity. When writing a definition, it is good to limit ambiguity. Definers write approved example lists to reduce ambiguity. Lists are finite, which is how they reduce ambiguity. Therefore when writing definitions that depend on other definitions, it is better to refer to lists instead of the lists' parent definitions. Second best is to refer to the lists, and mention the definition in case the list isn't long enough. Any serious license will be submitted to FSF and OSI lists. Since the FSF list is also included, and they don't discriminate like that (AFAIK), if a less well known etc license is rejected unfairly by OSI it will still be listed by the FSF. Since the OSSD definition says "OSI boolean-AND FSF approved licenses" this isn't an issue.

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Thorsten Glaser — 2008-09-03T10:36:03

Dave Crossland dixit: 1) The OSI list of approved licences is not a definition. The OSD is. 2) You have to weigh between ambiguity and the OSI's _admitted_ and _willingly_ done discrimination against licences with less (or less well-known) "community" (users, licence writers, etc). I for one would advise to not follow OSI's discriminatory actions. //mirabilos

Reminder: IRC meeting tonight!

Jonathan Gray — 2008-09-03T10:46:09

A reminder that a few of us are meeting on the #okfn IRC channel at oftc.net at 1900 BST tonight! If anyone has anything open knowledge related they'd like to discuss, propose, or tinker away at - please pop in and say hi! As well as using an IRC client, you connect using the web-based service Mibbit at: http://ur1.ca/4fh There's a rough agenda at: http://okfn.org/wiki/meetings/2008-09-03 Please add your name to the wiki if you're planning on coming. It would be great to see people there! Jonathan

Re: Wired Business blog

Luis Villa — 2008-09-02T13:39:50

Nah, the final straw is that all their customers hate them for producing something with very high costs and minimal incremental value. They've been dead for a while- it was just a matter of time before someone played the Haley Joel Osment role. There will be very few large companies left; the industry just got a lot smaller. Luis

Re: Wired Business blog

Iain Emsley — 2008-09-02T12:31:02

I wonder if the torrenting of text books might have been the final straw. I'll be curious to see how it pans out for both small and large companies. Iain Quoting Luis Villa public.gmane.org>: -- Iain Emsley Blog: www.yatterings.com Mobile: 07942 259725

Re: Wired Business blog

Luis Villa — 2008-09-02T12:35:04

Surprised it took this long. The textbook industry, like the Unix industry before it, has been ripe for a gutting by a low-cost-structure, peer-production competitor for a long time. Luis On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 7:39 AM, Iain Emsley public.gmane.org> wrote:

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Dave Crossland — 2008-09-02T12:30:45

2008/9/2 Thorsten Glaser public.gmane.org>: Referring to approved license lists is unambiguous. When writing a definition that depends on other definitions, it is good to limit ambiguity. So I think the OKFN's Service Definition ought to refer to license lists rather than other definitions. "Liberal input, conservative output" and all that.

Wired Business blog

Iain Emsley — 2008-09-02T11:39:40

Afternoon, I've just seen this article on Wired which I thought might be of interest: http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/09/open-source-tex.html Iain -- Iain Emsley Blog: www.yatterings.com Mobile: 07942 259725

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Thorsten Glaser — 2008-09-02T06:52:05

Dave Crossland dixit: Sure, but even the OSI themselves say that being OSI approved is only a subclass of being OSD compliant Open Source (tm) software. They admit to willingly not approve Open Source (tm) licences. //mirabilos

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Dave Crossland — 2008-09-01T18:13:01

2008/9/1 Rufus Pollock public.gmane.org>: No probs :-) Yes, Fedora confirmed there were 0 programs with these licenses in its licensing audit last year, as there was some efforts to get Fedora on the GNU Project's Recommended GNU/Linux Distributions list. I'm not sure where that is stuck. :-) Yes :-) Thanks! :-)

Re: Open Software Service Definition

Rufus Pollock — 2008-09-01T18:01:53

First up: thanks for these excellent comments Dave. [snip] Sounds reasonable -- plus those don't seem to be major licenses so them getting excluded isn't really going to make anyone unhappy I would imagine ... Having read your links and comments I agree. [snip] Interesting use cases. As you say the change to 'made available to its users' would address all of these I think. I'm happy with this suggested mod. For the moment it can get wrapped into the 'development version' and if there is no subsequent objection :) it will go into v1.1. ~rufus

Re: OKF main site re-design?

John Bywater — 2008-09-01T17:20:23

I'm always happy to help! :-) Think we could usefully list the interactions you want to support, identify a core and make them work as well as possible. Your suggestion for the main page would be the lid on this pan. :-) J.

CKAN for UK PSI

Jonathan Gray — 2008-09-01T14:54:27

Thought these blog posts might be of interest if people hadn't already seen them: http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/packaging-data-for-reuse/ http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2008/08/taggov/ Jonathan