Species-ID:Ownership and sponsors
THIS IS AN UNAPPROVED DRAFT!
Species-ID is is community-owned project. This means:
- All data like text and media files are available for download by everyone, similar to how Wikipedia is downloadable. Species-ID Download Link - NOT YET IMPLEMENTED
- The complete server (a virtual machine) as well as all registration data is accessible by a consortium of service sponsors willing to guarantee the service (see below).
In line with the open source and open content spirit, no single organisation can decide to discontinue the service. Even if all service sponsors should decide to terminate the service, a third party could restart the service based on the public backup copies.
The trust model implies one limitation: all activity on this site must be public. The project may enforce a limited number of write-protections to certain content, but cannot read protect "confidential" content. Furthermore, while copyright remains with the creators, all content must be licensed under a Creative Commons license (see Copyrights).
The following sponsor organisations form a consortium that guarantees the actual operation of several wiki services (the "BiowikiFarm"):
- Key to Nature
- MORE to come
The goal of the service sponsorship is to support a continuous long term operation of the sercive. Each service sponsor keeps a backup copy of the entire setup (currently virtual machine). Furthermore, each service sponsor has all necessary security information (virtual machine backup access, root access for extended backup, domain name management access). All actions resulting in a change of service or the inclusion of further sponsors must be discussed in advance and agreed, if necessary by majority rule. The technical means of service provision (e. g., backup, fall-over service, or some form of shared and replicated service) will be decided by the sponsors.
Sponsor organisations listed above express their interest in the project and their willingness to dedicate resources to keep the operation running for several years. A sponsor organisation may withdraw its commitment of service sponsorship after giving notice one year ahead of the actual withdrawal. Sponsor organisations may limit their support to a limited amount of resources (e. g., "up to one server with 8 cores and 8 GB RAM, administration time not exceeding 5 days per year"). Presently, the BiowikiFarm requires only a single virtual linux machine, with resources of about 1 or 2 assigned processor cores, about 4 GB memory and around 200 GB harddisk space. The present configuration will be listed under " Service configuration".
See also the project Charter.
