[meta] Re: Open Government Data bill (for comments)

[Seth Cohn]

> On Tuesday, January 11, 2011 02:13:16 am Jeffry Smith wrote:
>> My recommendation would be to include (based on IETF procedures) a
>> requirement that any non-NH Government standard be implemented by at
>> least 2 independent programs, that can read and write the format
>> interchangably.  For NH Government developed ones, the final
>> format/specification cannot be finalized until there are at least two
>> indendent programs, to ensure that the format is, in fact able to be
>> implemented by anyone.

While I agree this would be nice, it's the sort of specifics I'm
trying to avoid... that's more far policy detail than statute level.
I'll put it on my list of 'would be nice' changes, to see if there is
enough support to add, once I get general buy in.


On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 5:02 AM, Ryan Stanyan <ryan.stanyan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm being a bit impractical and redundant here, but I would also like to see
> all standards be available to the public on request.  I know this was covered
> in the amendment, but I am looking at the ISO website and I'm seeing that for
> ODF it would cost about 335 dollars to get the specification for it.  I'm not
> sure how it could be implemented without infringing on the ISO's copyrights.
> I see a lot of standards that NH mandates, but they seem to be set at the RSA-
> level.

doesn't this cover that?

 (d)  Make readily accessible, on the state
website, documentation on open data formats used by the state of New
Hampshire.  When data in open format is made available through the
state's website, a link shall be provided to the corresponding data
format documentation.

In this case, common use of ODF would mean that a link/download to the
ODF documentation (aka the spec)
should be posted on the state website.  If the spec is copyright to
the point of forbidden reposting, I think that fails

(4)  Has a specification available for all to read, in a
human-readable format, written in commonly accepted
technical language;

That's not really available for all to read, only those with $335, right?

Jeffry wrote:
> Good point.  For ODT, the saving grace is that it's an OASIS standard
> as well, which is freely available
> (http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OpenDocument-v1.1.odt) - but
> that's not true for other ISO standards.

Which solves ODT, but raises the question, would ISO standards be
considered Open?

Seth