[CAVO] [License-review] OSET Foundation (See Our Draft Statement From Last Night + "?")

[Lawrence Rosen]

Thanks Klaus,

 

One of my previous activities was as co-chair of the Legal Committee of the Open Web Foundation <http://www.openwebfoundation.org/> . This organization prepared a set of agreements for specifications that would/could become software standards. Our objective, as always, was to encourage open source. Take a look at that website. Attorneys for major software companies participated here. Those agreements were adapted for use in W3C Community Groups.

 

So I believe I understand the distinction between an "industry software standard" and a mere "specification for software." 

 

For elections I want open specifications (under CC licenses is fine, although I prefer the Open Web Foundation agreements because they include patent claims); I want open source software under the GPLv3 and other FOSS licenses; and to the extent you can get companies and government agencies to agree, I want open standards.

 

Given that VIP is just a specification, and there is no accompanying software yet, why a new OSET license?

 

> David suspects "that a lot of this code could show up repurposed in the OSET repository - but with an OSET license attribution put on it instead... the same people are involved in both OSET and the VIP code base…” 

 

Given that the specification is under a CC license, why don't we just copy it and put it into our CAVO repository? Create a derivative work? Create FOSS software under licenses of our choice? I repeat: Who needs a new license? Who needs their additional permission to do this?

 

/Larry

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Klaus-Dieter Naujok [mailto:klaus at illumonus.com] 
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2015 2:08 PM
To: CAVO <cavo at opensource.org>
Subject: Re: [CAVO] [License-review] OSET Foundation (See Our Draft Statement From Last Night + "?")

 

Larry, before answering your specific question, let me clarify where I am coming from regarding Standards and Specifications.

 

Standards are typically developed according to a specified set of rules and procedures providing consensus amongst many parties, such as national Standards bodies (ANSI, DIN, BSI, ..), and is published by a neutral party, such as ISO, IEC and ITU.  While standards have different purposes, they are mostly used as a reference for design or product criteria.

 

A specification is typically a company or organization specific document which sets parameters for an item. An example of a specification would be geometric, electrical and other parameters for a specific device a specific manufacturer makes. However, a company (or other entity such as a government) may develop a specification for something such as a device or part which will be purchased. Thus, a specification may be developed for many companies as a requirement by one company (or a few companies) which is applicable to a device or part produced by any company accepting a contract.

 

> On Sep 14, 2015, at 12:51 PM, Lawrence Rosen < <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> 

> Klaus, I'm now really confused.

 

Don't be.

 

> If VIP isn't a specification for a standard, then is it merely source code for a potential GPLv3 program?

 

As stated on GitHub < <https://github.com/votinginfoproject/vip-specification> https://github.com/votinginfoproject/vip-specification>:

 

"Voting Information Project XML Specification - This XML specification defines the relationships among a number of election related elements." 

 

The owners of this work themselves called it a specification and that is why I made my comment about calling it a Standard.

 

As to your question "if VIP isn't a specification for a standard, then is it merely source code for a potential GPLv3 program?” 

 

Your conclusion is correct, it is a set/collection of code, data, table layouts, scripts, etc., that could be use to create, or be part of, an open source application.

 

> In what way is it special to OSET?

 

I don't know, especially as stated by Heather, that "the Foundation is currently in discussions with 11 states on adoption and deployment of its largest code distribution -- the Voter Services Portal -- which includes online voter registration and several other capabilities ready for back-end integration with legacy systems.”

 

David suspects "that a lot of this code could show up repurposed in the OSET repository - but with an OSET license attribution put on it instead... the same people are involved in both OSET and the VIP code base…” 

 

If that is the case it would further suggest that the OSET goal by OSET is that any voting applications based/using this code etc, also is being released under the OSET license. If not, why even create their own FOSS license in the first place?

 

Regards,

 

Klaus

 

--

Klaus-Dieter Naujok, Chief Executive Officer

Illumonus, LLC - Simplifying eBusiness

Privacy is a Right - not a Privilege!

 

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