[Xesam] The Ontology Open Source Project and OSCAF - 2nd try

[Sebastian Trüg]

On Saturday 30 May 2009 10:33:23 Ivan Frade wrote:
> You say "compromise". I guess that happens when you have two solutions and
> find a middle term. In this case we have: a good solution (open source
> developement) and a second solution that is the same, but adding a layer of
> useless burocracy on top (that does no actual work and gets money). Either
> you clarify what is the value that OSCAF add or it shouldn't be added.

Stefan or Leo, would you please give an answer to this. I fail to find the 
correct words.

> > 1. OSCAF
> > There was a lot of concern about OSCAF. However, OSCAF has always been
> > intended to be an open and non-profit organization to give an "official"
> > face
> > to the desktop ontology maintenance. It is not driven by a specific
> > company,
> > nor will it hold any copyright over the ontologies. You can look at it as
> > the
> > KDE e.V. for the desktop ontologies. The "scary" texts on the homepage
> > will be
> > changed, the semanticdesktop.org domain will be transferred to OSCAF.
> > The latter is important since we need the domain to stay with an
> > impartial player.
>
>  XESAM maintaining nepomuk otologies:
> 1) There is ontology maintenance
> 2) It is driven by meritocracy = the people who does the work
> 3) The copyright works as in any other open source project
> 4) No fees/burocracy -> just work
> 5) No "scary" texts, or legal subterfuges.

this is what I propose.

>
>  Besides, KDE e.V.  (or GNOME Foundation) doesn't have veto power over the
> contents of the respective projects.

neither does OSCAF.

> > 2. The actual development
> > The actual development will happen on freedesktop.org. We can reuse
> > existing
> > development facilities such as an svn, mailing lists, task trackers, and
> > so on. Whenever a release is to be made the new version will be uploaded
> > to the
> > OSCAF server (might not be that important to "us" desktop developers at
> > the moment but is for semantic web compatibility).
>
>  As i said few mails ago, The open source community does the work and put
> the resources, and OSCAF "tag" a release (and gets the money). Sounds
> unfair.

OSCAF is the open-source community. There is no one else. But there are others 
who can explain this better.

Cheers,
Sebastian

> > 3. Copyright
> > The ontologies will be released under a free licence. Contributors will
> > keep
> > their copyright. We propose a dual MIT/CCBY licensing since ontologies
> > can be
> > seen as creative work rather than real source-code.
>
> Not sure about this. Not sure even if it is relevant at all. The current
> Nepomuk license is open enough to allow a open source developement.
>
> > 4. Maintenance
> > Within the Nepomuk project tools have been developed to ensure the
> > quality and
> > the validity of the ontologies. We propose to install these on the
> > development
> > server (freedesktop) to ensure that
> > - commits do not break backwards-compatibility
> > - commits do not introduce contradictions
> > - etc.
>
> Probably those tools are open source already. i dont see the big deal here.
>
> Is this a compromise everybody can live with?
>
> > Please comment.
>
> I dont like it. We are here to build ontologies (or improve the existent
> ones). For that we just need people working
> and Infrastructure; everything else is superfluous. OSCAF is not providing
> any of those ingredients (and adding problems on top). The conclusion is
> easy.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ivan