Dear Markus,
Let me give you first a general response to many of your questions, then I'll go in detail between lines of your message responding more specific questions.
The definition of the FIWARE Architecture as well as the FIWARE Open Specifications is something that will evolve over time. GEs that may be part of FIWARE in Release x (e.g., Release 3) may not longer be in Release x+1 (e.g, Release 4). That's normal life of products. It's also normal that this evolution will be governed by the members of the community that are endorsing FIWARE and committing resources to its further evolution and adoption at every release.
It is also natural that the community evolves over time so that partners/members who were engaged, involving resources in a given phase, decide to stop contributing at a given moment, leaving the community at that time. There may be also partners who request to join at a given release, meet the criteria and join the community.
What is also clear is that decision about what FIWARE is and how it evolves over releases should belong to active members of the community during each phase. In other words, partners/members involved in definition and production of a given Release of FIWARE should be the ones who govern what that release brings. This is common sense and best practice accepted in any industry standard bodies like OMG, Oasis, etc. There is no members of those bodies who can join at given moment, then decide to stop contributing and afterwards come back arguing they should govern decisions despite they do not plan to be further engaged in consortia activities. Active membership is what allows you to keep participating in decisions. Here, active membership means engaging on FIWARE activites, which in practice maps to a) committing resources to keep things going at overall FIWARE level, supporting activities dealing with further refinement and evolution of the FIWARE Architecture and Open Specs as a whole, as well as the FIWARE GEris and b) promoting the adoption of FIWARE as a common standard platform in Europe for certain application domains. .
As a result of the evolution of the community supporting the evolution and adoption of FIWARE:
* GEs that were considered part of FIWARE in a given release may not longer be considered part of FIWARE in the next release, based on decision of the active community that is involved in FIWARE for the new release.
* A given open source GEri owned by a given partner/member of the community may remain being listed in the FIWARE Catalogue as such (GEri) even in the event that partner leaves the community, but that requires that active members/partners of the community agree on that, and they may agree on that just temporarily, until a replacement for that GEri is found, contributed by another partner/member (new or not). It may be decided to explain that the GEi is temporarily considered as GEri until a replacement is found in the "Overview" and "Terms and Conditions" part.
* A given GEi owned by a given partner/member of the community may remain being listed in the FIWARE Catalogue as such (note that I'm talking about a GEi, not a GEri) even in the event that partner leaves the community and there is a different product working as GEri of the GE, if the GE remains being part of FIWARE. However, we will leave it out from the FIWARE Catalogue for the time being until its re-design allows external audiences to clearly distinguish between GEis and GEris.
So far, until a formal community governance process is established, there is not better way to identify the active members/partners of the community that will back FIWARE activities in the future than mapping it with the consortia of FI-Core. Actually, the FI-Core consortia gathers partners from phase 1 and 2 of the FI-PPP who have engaged to keep contributing resources to the evolution and adoption of FIWARE as a whole. At least, the FI-Core consortia gathers the community that supports the definition of FIWARE Release 4. That's clear.
You may see it as an evolution of the constituency of the community of partners/members contributing to FIWARE. It was made by the set of partners in the FI-WARE project during a given phase (mapping the first 3 years of the FI-PPP) but now its constituency has changed so partners/members of the community are the partners in FI-Core. Evolution of the constituency of the FIWARE community, as it happens with other communities, is something natural.
What the EC is asking us, and we should answer their demand, is to clear out what will remain in FIWARE as GEs in Release 4, as well as what will be GEris and GEis linked to those GEs. Note that Release 4 is going to be build by partners/members of the community contributing to and supporting FIWARE with the advent of FI-Core, starting Agust 1st or September 1st at the latest. You may argue that FIWARE Release 4 is not yet finalized, but there is a clear picture about what will remain in Release 4 already, based on the statement of what will remain as part of the FIWARE Architecture made by FI-Core partners/members in their proposal. Based on that, we are carrying out the cleaning of the FIWARE Catalogue because we know that developers out there are relying on the FIWARE Catalogue to start experimenting with FIWARE and we want to avoid they try with GEis of GEs that we can anticipate they won't remain being part of FIWARE.
It might have been considered to create a special section in the FIWARE Catalogue dealing with "implementation of GEs that were part of FIWARE Release 3 but are not longer part of FIWARE in Release 4" or something like that but this was considered not necessary and risky by the EC and FIWARE accelerator projects (the ones distributing 100 MEUR among SMEs and entrepreneurs that will use FIWARE) now that we are facing phase 3 of the FI-PPP which is the phase in which we are exposing FIWARE to the wider community of developers.
The work and contribution of a given partner/member of the community during a given period of lifetime of that community is something that deserves respect and recognition. If a GE/GEri/GEi contributed by a given partner/member of the community becomes deprecated once that partner voluntarily stops contributing to the community, it is not a responsibility of that partner/member or something that should mean a concern for that partner. If this is the concern of SAP (or any other partner who has voluntarily stopped contributing to FIWARE), I have to say that I can't see any implications regarding rejection of costs declared by that partner/member during the period while it was actively contributing, since the GEs/GEis it was contributing were indeed considered part of FIWARE Release 3. If this is the concern of SAP, be sure that this is the position that Telefónica would firmly support. Any other thing would be meaningless. IMHO, the EC may reject costs linked to deprecated GEs/GEris/GEis if they can demonstrate they lacked of quality, the amount of costs reported are unjustifiable or the given partner hasn't meet some statement of the contract. But that is criteria that would also apply to GEs/GEris/GEis which won't be deprecated in Release 4 (i.e., something may be planned to be supported in Release 4 but was poorly delivered in Release 3). In other words, it's a different story. BTW, I'm not aware about any intention of rejection of costs by the EC regarding GEs/GEris/GEis in FIWARE Release 3. They are more concerned about the future, i.e., the success of phase 3, I would say.
I hope that the above looks clear and explain why we are now dealing with the cleaning up of the FIWARE Catalogue. Of course, I'm happy to setup a dedicated confcall next week to deal with further clarifications.
Now, I'll try to answer some specific questions you raised in your last email, between lines of that email:
On 06/08/14 11:34, Heller, Markus wrote:
Hi Juanjo,
I have only now seen that the same license error as reported with "Modified BSD License" is for our GEs in WP5 also (although here the WP5 SAP GES seem to be online currently as to be kept). The same argument as in my mail below applies there.
Please note that one should know that the BSD License is called as such because it is the official name "Modified BSD License" for it. We have not tampered with it.
All SMEs and public users know the "Modified BSD License" as one of the older known OS licenses (if I recall right) in the Internet so they definitely would not be surprised if they read about it. Please correct the mistakes in the GE review XLS for all the affected SAP GEs, please. Our licenses are by far better for SMEs and adopters that many other GEs in my opinion and potential users will know this.
Nevertheless, your review revealed that we might present the chosen license online in a better ways on the text-basis in the Catalog to avoid any possible irritations using the official license name.
My major concern with the license you proposed is that you state in the Catalogue: "Software ... is provided as open source under the BSD License" but then when you click on the provided link in GitHub, you can see a license that reads "Modified BSD License" in the header followed by "Copyright (c) 2012, SAP AG. All rights reserved".
I guess that the BSD License is not a license copyrighted by SAP, so it's evident that the software is not provided under the BSD License but a derivated version of it. Your statement in the catalogue would be more accurate if it reads "Software ... is provided as open source under a modified version of the BSD License" ... I would then keep what you already have there, i.e., "which still allows maximum reuse, contribution and the freedom of commercialization by 3rd parties" (I believe is more accurate to use "by" than "for") but I would add "without any compensation to SAP" or something like that (otherwise, who grants that SAP has not precisely changed the license to ask for some sort of license fee).
Besides the above recommendations, what I would like to highlight is that this would be an example some SMEs provided feedback about in a recent workshop celebrated for the preparation of phase 3 of the FI-PPP. Those SMEs told us "If I see that the implementation of a GE is under a license that a big company has created on its own, even as derivation of a well-known open source license, I simply don't use the product because I don't have resources to evaluate what can be the legal implications of that propietary license (being derived from a well-known open source license or not)". You may take this feedback or not, but I would consider it valuable feedback.
Anyways, the point that I was making in the .xls file is tht the license of SAP's product is not THE BSD License but a modified BSD License (as stated in the header of the license text. I would recommend SAP to state clearly that it is using a modified BSD License and which were the changes that SAP has introduced in the BSD License or, at least, how (I guess) major features of the BSD License remain, as proposed above. That may reduce the chances of being rejected by a given SME.
For WPL votes:
- WP8: We wonder that for WP8 the WPL seems to have voted "yes" to our information initially but now this seems to have changed? As far as I know, this is not the case also. Please check this, we try the same.
- For WP3 I had contacted WP3 WPL Alessandra why she voted "No" but she has given no explanation to me about her reasons.
For coordinator votes:
- I also do not know why the coordinator has voted with "no" or not in all cases. I expect a reasoning about each GE here as well from TID, please, as long as the vote yes/no is important for our affected GEs being put _offline_.
I assume that the reasons that causes a WPL to vote "No" to a given GE/GEi have to do with the fact that the GE/GEi will not be part of FIWARE in Release 4. WPLs (FIWARE technical chapter leaders) in the FI-WARE project are WPLs (FIWARE technical chapter leaders) in FI-Core so I assume they can anticipate what will be there in FIWARE Release 4. Myself, as Chief Architect of FIWARE in the FI-WARE project and FI-Core, have also a clear picture about Release 4 overall, and this is what I have followed as criteria. That's why you can see my position typically matches the one of the WPLs (FIWARE technical chapter leaders).
Please let me note, that we are not in general against being presented to the public in a _separate_ section of the FI-WARE catalog as a FI-WARE-1 result.
But from the beginning of this exercise I have asked where and how this public presentation will be done with no answer sadly.
The EC has told us that they don't want to see GEs/GEis linked to FIWARE Release 3 in the Catalogue if they are not going to be in FIWARE Release 4. We even proposed to create a separate section as you have suggested but the EC thought it was not a good idea. BTW, it was considered also not a good idea by the whole set of 16 FIWARE accelerator projects that are starting to promote FIWARE in phase 3. I have to say that I understand their rationale.
Note that the deliverables linked to Architecture, Open Specs and GEis in FIWARE Release 3 are being delivered to the EC based on what FIWARE Release 3 was. We are not dropping anything there. Therefore, what you name as "FI-WARE-1 result", which matches FIWARE Release 3, is going to be clearly presented to the EC.
It is anticipated that, in the future, there will be a section in the FIWARE Catalogue dealing with "incubated GEs/GEis". This very much like it is common in some other open source communities like OpenStack or Apache. At that time, we hope that a governance model with processes will be in place that will establish how an incubated GE/GEi may transition into a GE/GEi of an official release of FIWARE. It may be based on criteria like popularity among developers or some other criteria taken into account by governance bodies. This has to be defined as part of the governance model. There may be even contributions from partners different than FI-Core partners, which means that the constituency of the FIWARE community may grow beyond the limits of the FI-Core consortia. However, the community governance model and the section in the FIWARE Catalogue dealing with "incubated GEs/GEis" is not going to be there tomorrow (I hope it will be there in less than a year).
What we will definitely strongly object that you keep remove our GEs out of the sight of the public as this is one of our FI-WARE obligations as a FI-WARE partner, as you know.
You have been released of that "obligation" by the EC.
What you were not released was of the obligation to deliver FIWARE Release 3, and this is something we are actually dealing with, without removing any GE/GEi that was considered part of Release 3 when Release 3 was planned.
I think it might be very helpful if one of could help to sort this misunderstandings out and explain the proposed way for our GE public presentation in the FI-WARE Catalog.
I hope the above long email clarifies the picture. Let's program a confcall next week if you believe there are still pending points.
Best regards,
-- Juanjo
Best
Markus
From: Heller, Markus
Sent: Mittwoch, 6. August 2014 10:36
To: 'Davide Dalle Carbonare'
Cc: fiware-wpl at lists.fi-ware.eu<mailto:fiware-wpl at lists.fi-ware.eu>; fiware-wpa at lists.fi-ware.eu<mailto:fiware-wpa at lists.fi-ware.eu>
Subject: RE: [Fiware-wpl] Phase 1 in Cleaning up the FIWARE Catalogue
Hi Davide, Juanjo,
I detected an error for the repository, can you please correct:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AopQnlLhngy9dFVjQUJpLUFmYmVMbjVwbXFVRkstSXc#gid=0
In the cockpit, It is written for Repository GE, that we use as open source license "Modified BSD License" and it is commented "If should be kept only if the Store GEri has dependencies on it. While in the statement about external availability it is stated that the license is the BSD license, the link to GitHub regarding description of the license points out that is a modification of the BSD license. Users of GEis are providing feedback to us stating that any variation of well-known licenses is considered a risk by a SME, which doesn't have time nor resources to understand the implications of such modifications, therefore a motivation for not using it."
The BSD License is called "Modified BSD License", we ourselves have not modified it.
Please note that for Registry and Marketplace and Repository exactly the same license is used and there you (correctly) did not find such issue.
The chosen license bears no restriction in usage but has been adopted as such and we are fully compliant with FI-WARE rules (!).
We might need to improve/add some comments there for repiository for a better explanation, but the license itself is ok for Fi-WARE.
Can you please verify this as soon as possible and, when you agree, please remove the comment also then. If you do not agree, let us please set up a telco asap to sort this out. If you should need more information on this Please get in touch with us if we should explain this to you more.
Best
Markus
From: fiware-wpl-bounces at lists.fi-ware.org<mailto:fiware-wpl-bounces at lists.fi-ware.org> [mailto:fiware-wpl-bounces at lists.fi-ware.org] On Behalf Of Davide Dalle Carbonare
Sent: Dienstag, 5. August 2014 23:19
To: fiware-wpl at lists.fi-ware.eu<mailto:fiware-wpl at lists.fi-ware.eu>; fiware-wpa at lists.fi-ware.eu<mailto:fiware-wpa at lists.fi-ware.eu>
Subject: Re: [Fiware-wpl] Phase 1 in Cleaning up the FIWARE Catalogue
Dear partners,
this message to notify you that this step is completed.
Entries that match one of these cases below (indicated by the coordinator) are archived in the Catalogue and hidden in the eLearning platform:
- marked "No" by both WPL and Coord
- one "Yes" and one "No" (as a preventive measure)
- "No" by WPL and without opinion by Coord
kind regards,
and have nice vacations
Davide
On 23/07/2014 19:46, JUAN JOSE HIERRO SUREDA wrote:
Hi all,
Here is the google spreadsheet that maps the GEis with current public entries in the Catalogue.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AopQnlLhngy9dFVjQUJpLUFmYmVMbjVwbXFVRkstSXc#gid=0
Thanks to Davide for creating it.
The MiWi section is empty because nothing is published yet. However, I encourage them to start with the creation of entries, which should come before September 1st.
The last column ("To Keep") is a Yes/No combo. WPLs are asked to mark the correct value for each GEi by EOB tomorrow. Telefónica will review the final version and discuss with the WPL in the event we find any issue.
With the final version, we will proceed hiding all entries that were marked with "No" in the "To Keep" column, starting on Friday.
There is an additional column with the link to the training course, for completeness.
Best regards,
-- Juanjo
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