Saul Albert wrote:
[snip]
So - having looked through the other responses posted to the ofcom site
- where my original blog post was re-posted, I think something much
more recommendation-like and less rant-like is in order.
How about something short and relatively simple like this:
I think this looks good but I have quite a few comments (see below). To
my mind the essential thing is that the most effective use for PSP
funding would be:
1. Developing infrastructure (including documentation) to assist others
to create (open) content.
2. Seeding the knowledge (content/data) space by sponsoring the initial
development of open material and open projects to get to the them point
that they can then be taken on by the community (the history of F/OSS is
full of examples of projects that needed some upfront investment of
money/time/energy to get to point they became self-sustaining)
-------------------------
The founding of a Public Service Publisher (PSP) is an opportunity to
make a significant ongoing investment in the vast landscape of publicly
owned knowledge and the public knowledge infrastructures already
suggest: publicly owned -> open
developing on the Net.
We, the undersigned would like to see the PSP joining the international
communities of individuals, organisations and enlightened states
investing in:
- Free, Libre and Open Source (FLOSS) technologies and systems.
Suggest:
- Open Content and Open Data. In particular we urge that, where the PSP
fund the generation of new content, such content should always be made
available under a license such that others are free to use, redistribute
and most importantly re-use that content.
- Advocacy and educational initiatives about viable alternatives to
restrictive Intellectual Property (IP) for publicly funded projects.
Not quite sure about this one: are we arguing that they should use the
PSP to educate other governmental departments about openness?
- Advocacy and educational initiatives for people, companies, local
government and organisations to publish their materials and public
data in open, traversable formats, using open APIs.
I completely agree with the open formats item (and it is part of the
open knowledge definition
As I've posted about previously I have my concerns regarding open APIs
vs. just having open data/open services. What good is an open API if the
underlying data isn't open (so I can't redistribute or re-use that data
freely).
- Decentralized systems for the distribution of data and metadata (peer
to peer systems) for publicly funded and user generated content.
- Open Source Semantic Web services and infrastructures for greater
association and interlinking and searching of online resources.
This is a nice item but a) this is a rather massive area :) b) is it
really what one wants the PSP doing (perhaps but I'm just concerned that
as a recommendation it is just too broad to have much impact)
We feel that the PSP could have a vital role in addressing the strategic
concerns of the Net as a global and national infrastructure; exploring
and protecting the educational, commercial and societal possibilities of
what 'public service' might mean in this new context.
Nice ending.
~rufus
_______________________________________________
fc-uk-discuss mailing list
fc-uk-discuss@lists.okfn.org
http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/fc-uk-discuss
