New York State Senate goes open source
p2pnet news | Open Source:- The New York State Senate has launched what it’s calling a cutting-edge program to not only release data, “but help empower citizens and give back to the community”.
Under it the New York Senate will, for the first time, “give developers and other users direct access to its data through APIs and release its original software to the public,” it says, going on »»»
By placing the data and technological developments generated by the Senate in the public domain, the New York Senate hopes to invigorate, empower and engage citizens in policy creation and dialogue.
What You’ll Find Here
- Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for building your own applications and services
- Embeddable widgets for easy sharing on your site, profile or blog
- Original Software such as Drupal Modules and Java libraries
- Data sets in a variety of formats, along with Plain Language and graphical explanations of important documents and definitions
- The legal rules and licenses adopted by the Senate guaranteeing that the information and tools here can be used freely
Please take the data and tools offered here, mash them up, improve them and re-distribute them to help the Senate educate and engage the citizens of New York.
APIs
The New York Senate has created a developer API to help organizations and individuals compile the Senate data they want the way they want. The basic goal was to parse the flat file records from the Legislative Retrieval System (LRS) into an open format. This data can then be queried via a simple RESTful API to produce output in any number of desired formats or standards – XML (RSS, ATOM, custom schemas), JSON, CSV, HTML (widgets).
Embeddable Widgets
Widgets are a fun and easy way to reach people with important information. Please view our widget library and help yourself to the tools that will enhance the experience of your users, and ours, all over the web. If you have a widget of your own using our API or data, please contact us and we may feature it here.
coming soon
As a user of Open-Source software the New York Senate wants to help give back to the community that has given it so much – including this website. To meet its needs the Senate is constantly devleoping new code and fixing existing bugs. Not only does the Senate recognize that it has a responsibility to give back to the Open Source community, but public developments, made with public money should be public.You can find all the NY Senate source code published on Github at http://github.com/nysenatecio
Data Sets
The New York Senate’s Open Data page is the official repository of all government data. There you can browse through data produced by and considered by the Senate in their original forms as well as various other file types created for your convenience; including but not limited to: Excel spreadsheets, .csv, text files and PDFs. To supplement the source data it is making available, the Senate has also created the Plain Language Initiative designed to help explain complex data sets and legal terms in plain language.
Open-Source Software & Software Licenses
In order to make the Senate’s information and software as public as possible, it is has adopted unique system using two types of licenses – GNU General Public License as well as the BSD License. This system is meant to ensure the most public license is used in each specific case such that:
(i) Any Software released containing components with preexisting GPL copyrights must be released pursuant to a GPL v3 copyright restriction.
(ii) Any Software created independently by the Senate without any preexisting licensing restrictions on any of its components shall be released under dual licensing and take one of two forms: (a) a BSD license, or (b) a GPL v3 license. The ultimate user of such Software shall choose which form of licensing makes the most sense for his or her project.
(iii) Regarding Software containing preexisting copyright restrictions other than GPL, the CIO shall make the determination how he or she wishes to release such Software.
(Cheers, Seth)
June, 2009
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