On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Daniel Zaharevitz <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>
> I think that if the goal of defining Open is to equate Open with
> "always good for free and open exchange of data and tools" and not
> Open to equate to "never good for the free and open exchange of data
> and tools" , I don't think we will ever agree on a definition. On the
> other hand I think it might be possible to get a definition of Open
> which equates to "usually good for the free and open exchange of data
> and tools" and not Open to mean "presents problems for the free and
> open exchange of data and tools, but may be useful in certain
> circumstances".
>
>
I think this is a useful contribution - what we find in Open Data is that it
is not possible to pin it down with formal licences. What is available is
best endeavour within the norms of the community. That's what we have
attempted to consolidate in the Panton Principles:
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1939
One of the most valuable sets of specifications is the IETF drafts. They
have no legal force but they are explorations of whether a particular
specification would be useful to the community. Utlimately with time many
become de facto. They are characterised by
"rough consensus and running code"
I stress the "running code". Anyone can invent a set of words which might
describe a specification but until this is implemented it is of relatively
little value. Henry Rzepa and I went through this with Chemical MIME
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/chemime/
It's had widespread use and is essentially an Open Specification. If people
want to add more files they can mail Henry and they'll get included. It's
not "Open" in that Henry controls the web page but that is a narrow and
legalistic view. AFAIK no-one has raised any concerns in the 15 years it's
been up. Put simply, it works.
If you try to formalize this by requiring various processes it will start to
kill it. If you insist that anyone can modify it and redistribute other
versions which are incompatible with the original you destroy its value.
I am happy to draft some principles which address what an Open Specification
is. There will not be a legal definition because that is not possible,
especially in a distributed community like the BO. The main purpose of the
BO in proposing Open Standard/specs was to highlight the value of having
references of documents which we do our best to conform to. If we can't
conform, then maybe we need some other course of action.
You cannot have complete anarchy and open specifications. The methods of
governance range from learned societies through government orgs to
meritocracies to BDSLs. There are many autocratic decisions in Open Source -
that doesn't stop if from being Open.
P.
--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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