On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Rafael Pezzi <[email protected]> wrote: > 1) I do not understand why software is formally excluded from the open > definition. Since it is a definition it could very well embrace previous > works. Isn't the open definition compatible with free software definition? > > It seems odd to me having a Definition of Free Cultural Works that excludes > one particular kind of cultural work.
For historical reasons, free/open source software has separate institutions, including licenses and license vetting standards and bodies. Honestly, I think this is suboptimal, but will probably takes years if not decades to change. I am glad that someone agrees with me. :) OKD 1.1 notes "Software is excluded despite its obvious centrality because it is already adequately addressed by previous work." OKD 1.2 draft is slightly more informative "Software is excluded despite its obvious centrality because it is already adequately addressed by previous work, including the [Open Source Definition](http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd) (OSD), upon which this document is modeled." > 2) Why not use an free version control system such as http://gitorious.org/ > for consistency? See this text by Ben Mako Hill for reference. Glad you asked (having sent http://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html to this list recently myself, regarding a different thread). OKFN's numerous repositories are on Github, and someone pointed to an OD repository there when I asked about versioning the OKD some time ago. Because I didn't know where it was versioned, I had thrown a proposed revision into a personal repository on gitorious. Anyway, for now I'll mirror just the opendefinition repository on gitorious at https://gitorious.org/floss-docs-diffs/opendefinition in case anyone wants to watch or contribute via a web interface with no proprietary software involved. :) In the longer term I'd guess discussion of the OSSD, noted in the post, will include or provoke further discussion of the appropriateness, value, irony, etc of OSSD-on-OSSD-[non-]conforming services. But I hope such is fairly measured, as I think there's a lot to discuss around open services and their relation to the sustainability (in whatever way you want it to mean) of open data, open government and the like closer to OKFN's core activities, beyond slogans. ;-) Mike _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/okfn-discuss
