On Openness (was: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] workshop on "Open Government: Open Data, Open Source and Open Standards")

[Seven (aka Arnulf)]

Puneet,
thanks for posting this.

All,
this is perfect timing to further our own understanding on openness. We 
are working on this from several ends and as we do, notice that there 
are many different takes on openness. There are for example noticeable 
differences in how the OGC uses the term openness when it comes to 
standards development. But they are not wrong in how they use it, just 
different. The same applies to OpenStreetMap who also have a broad 
understanding of what they mean with Openness. Even the public 
administration starts to develop and understanding of what openness 
could mean. This again proves that truth, just like time are relative.

For a very short definition check this OSGeo page:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/The_definition_of_Open_in_OGC,_OSGeo_and_OSM

In order to better communicate which aspect of openness OSGeo promotes 
and how it relates to OGC activities the OGC has asked us whether we 
would be interested to produce a joint white paper. We discussed this at 
a board of directors meeting last year but never finished this because 
it is quite an involved topic. At the last meeting we decided that it 
makes sense to involve the whole community in defining what this is. To 
this effect we have created a Wiki page with a first shot at this White 
Paper. It also contains the take that the OGC has developed around 
openness and how this relates to us. The page is available here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Talk:Open_Source_and_Open_Standards

Please go to this page and hack it. Write whatever you think is relevant 
from our point of view. We should not change the OGC's definition, even 
if we feel that it is not complete or differs from our understanding. 
The idea is to allow for different takes. Diversity makes the world go 
round. It would be great if we could come up with a comprehensive paper 
that we can publish together with the OGC. It will always be a 
compromise but it will show that we have matured as an organization to a 
level where we can interact strategically.

Apart from this please also feel free to maintain our own definition of 
Openness which has been defined here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Openness

If my presentation for FOSS4G gets accepted this might also become a 
presentation which we can give at SOTM, FOSS4G and the Denver OGC TC 
Meeting.

Have fun,
Arnulf


On 03/16/2011 04:24 AM, Mr. Puneet Kishor wrote:
> ## Open Government
>
> Announcing a workshop on *Open Government: Open Data, Open Source
> and Open Standards* organized jointly by [Dr Hanif. Rahemtulla][hr],
> Horizon Digital Economy Research and [Puneet Kishor][pk], Science
> Fellow, Creative Commons, in conjunction with the annual Open Source
> GIS Conference, June 21, 2011, Nottingham, United Kingdom. The
> workshop will be held at the [School of Geography/Centre for
> Geospatial Science][cg]>  at the University of Nottingham.
>
> [hr]: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cgs/people/Hanif.Rahemtulla
> [pk]: http://punkish.org
> [cg]: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cgs/index.aspx
>
> This meeting follows and builds upon the [Law and the GeoWeb][lg]
> workshop on intellectual property issues with geographic data in the
> internet era, colocated with the annual meeting of Association of
> American Geographers, April 11, 2011 at the campus of Microsoft
> Research, Seattle, Washington.
>
> [lg]: http://punkish.org/geoweb/index.html
>
> The *Open Government* workshop will bring together speakers from
> across industry, research and academia to contribute towards some of
> the fundamental theoretical and technical questions emerging in the
> Open Data space (i.e., how to mark up and release open data;
> licensing models for governments and how to interface them to other
> open source and commercial licensing regimes; conflicts between data
> protection and transparency and structuring access to data by
> different groups). The session will be a series of presented papers
> with a lively explorative session which will inform, provoke and
> encourage discussion.
>
> Proceedings of the Seattle and Nottingham workshops along with
> selected longer papers will be published in a special issue of the
> open-access [International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure
> Research][ij] published by the Joint Research Centre of the European
> Commission.
>
> [ij]: http://ijsdir.jrc.ec.europa.eu
>
> ## Speakers
>
> Speakers reflect the broad spectrum of constituencies in the Open
> Data domain from across academia, research and the industrial
> sector. The following speakers are confirmed:
>
> *   Professor David Martin, School of Geography, University of
>      Southampton
> *   Professor Derek McAuley, Director of Horizon Digital Economy
>      Research, University of Nottingham
> *   Dr. Peter Mooney, Department of Computer Science, University of
>      Maynooth
> *   Dr. Richard Mortier, Horizon Digital Economy Research,
>      University of Nottingham
> *   Dr. Catherine Mulligan, Horizon Digital Economy Research,
>      University of Nottingham
> *   Mr Ian Holt, Senior Technical Product Manager, Ordnance Survey,
>      Southampton
> *   Dr. Chris Parker, GeoVation and Community Propositions, Ordnance
>      Survey, Southampton
>
> ## Contact
>
> Registration for the Open Source GIS conference and workshop will
> commence shortly (see below for conference website). for further
> information please contact either [Dr. Hanif Rahemtulla][eh],
> Horizon Digital Economy Research at the University of Nottingham or
> [Puneet Kishor][ep], Science Fellow, Creative Commons.
>
> [eh]: mailto:hanif.rahemtulla at nottingham.ac.uk
> [ep]: mailto:punkish at creativecommons.org
>
> ## Further Reference
>
> *   [OSGIS Conference][oc], University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
> *   [Law and the GeoWeb][lg], Microsoft Research, Seattle, USA
>
> [oc]: http://cgs.nottingham.ac.uk/~osgis11/os_home.html
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss


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