Licence of VO-DML files?

[Gerard Lemson]

Hi

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dm-bounces at ivoa.net <dm-bounces at ivoa.net> On Behalf Of Markus
> Demleitner
> Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2020 3:44
> To: Data Models mailing list <dm at ivoa.net>
> Subject: Re: Licence of VO-DML files?
> 
> Hi Pat,
> 
> On Wed, Nov 04, 2020 at 12:39:58PM -0800, Patrick Dowler wrote:
> > I always thought of the VO-DML file as a machine-readable description
> > of the standard, so it is in between document and software (like xsd,
> > but xsd seems closer to implementation so a little more like s/w).
> 
> Well, *so far* I had hoped that VO-DML is exactly like XSD in that it tells the
> software what to expect where.
> 
I agree with this. 
And my usage of both has also been almost exactly similar. 
I generally used tools like JAXB to generate code representations of XSD schemas for parsing, validating and analyzing XML documents.
I did the same by using XSLT to generating JAVA code from VO-DML models to interpret annotated VOTables as instances of the model, validate those and analyze them etc.
Don't see a significant difference.

And also, to me the VO-DML/XML document is the most important product coming out of a data modelling effort. 
The PDF coming with it explains it in human terms, gives some background etc.
The VO-DML is the formal representation that one can code against.

Cheers
Gerard





> While the recent discussions make me doubt things will fly that way, that's
> still the state of the current implementation, and that's why VO-DML drafts
> come with DaCHS.
> 
> > Why would you distribute VO-DML files with the s/w? To avoid
> > downloading them from a URL at build time or runtime? I will admit to
> > being lazy and putting copies of (IVOA) XSD files into source to avoid
> > the pain* of getting them during the build (I definitely want the s/w
> > to be stable and robust from then on so would not want to get them
> > periodically at runtime)...
> >
> > * both transient build failures when ivoa.net fails and to avoid
> > having rogue build/test/CI beating up on ivoa.net servers
> 
> These are all good reasons to keep the files with the software; also, I
> sometimes have... patches in there while IVOA review is still going on and I'm
> nagging on my TCG colleagues to review the relevant standards.
> 
> For VO-DML, there's the additional problem that for most of these files,
> there's not even a stable download location (or at least there wasn't when
> last I looked).
> 
> Quite important to me is also to minimise the amount of "calling home" that a
> software does.  In general, it is my conviction that software should not
> initiate any network connection that its user would not reasonably expect.
> Fetching all kinds of resources from across the net for tasks that for a user
> wouldn't seem to involve the network to me is (at least potentially) infringing
> on user's rights.
> 
> But then or course there are exceptions -- while Vocabularies 2 has offline
> operation as an explicit use case, my current implementations (cf.
> https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgith
> ub.com%2Fastropy%2Fpyvo%2Fpull%2F241&amp;data=04%7C01%7Cglemso
> n1%40jhu.edu%7C575abc397ed741d9777908d88166fe27%7C9fa4f438b1e6473
> b803f86f8aedf0dec%7C0%7C0%7C637401626646570796%7CUnknown%7CTW
> FpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJX
> VCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=UU3HDHUG30773Mvp%2B3CQeW58S3a
> mUjij6hpPeil0WKM%3D&amp;reserved=0) do forsee that every 6 months
> the box goes to ivoa.net when the user does a datalink semantics match.
> The reasoning is roughy that since people *I* trust are running ivoa.net, pyvo
> users can trust them, too.  Ahem.
> 
> But then: even if programmes go out and pull VO-DML without distributing it,
> having a clear and permissive licence will help.  I, for one, am not sure what it
> means if I pull and use a CC-BY-SA file in my software.  Do I need to inform
> my deployer I did so?  How do I cover the SA clause?
> 
>           -- Markus
> 
> [Who can't lie: the longer I think about it, the more I believe that my initial
> assessment that the CC-BY-SA vs CC-0 debate was largely ephemeral wasn't
> quite right and I should have tried a bit harder to convince people]