[License-review] Request for approval by license steward: Tidepool Open Access to Health Data Software License

John Cowan cowan at mercury.ccil.org
Mon Oct 7 03:39:47 UTC 2013


Richard Fontana scripsit:

> A comment on the end of this sentence: You say in your FAQ:
> 
>   Q: Is it good enough to provide access to a downloadable CSV or excel
>   file?
> 
>   No, that's not good enough. You need to provide a mechanism for
>   another application to automatically access the data, such as through
>   a published API. This is what we mean by "machine-accessible."

I can't agree that a published URI which returns a CSV document, or an
XML or JSON document, does not count as a "published API".  It may be
something of a batch API, since it returns all the data, but what of that?
CSV is machine-processable, so the data is machine-accessible.  In any
case, this is a technology restriction which looks to me to violate
OSD #10.

-- 
John Cowan              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan      cowan at ccil.org
"After all, would you consider a man without honor wealthy, even if his
Dinar laid end to end would reach from here to the Temple of Toplat?"
"No, I wouldn't", the beggar replied.  "Why is that?" the Master asked.
"A Dinar doesn't go very far these days, Master.        --Kehlog Albran
Besides, the Temple of Toplat is across the street."      The Profit



More information about the License-review mailing list