Where does licence goes

[gioppo]

I was wandering on where the information about the licence (GPL, LGPL etc) can be placed.

[jonathan.carter]

Do you mean the license details for Essential Architecture Manager and the Essential Meta Model?

If so, these can be found be found in EA_Support->About_Essential->Essential_Licensing in the class browser when you're working on your Essential project.

However, if you mean where can you capture the license model of e.g. an application, then let me start by describing how we capture products that are used in the architecture. Things in the application layer of the meta model are there to capture the behaviour of the systems that are supporting your processes. When you are using a packaged-application, it is your implementation/configuration of that application that you are capturing in the Application layer, e.g. 'Our ERP System'. The software product that is the packaged-application that you bought is captured as a Technology Product, e.g. 'SAP::mySAP ERP'.

The Technology Products have a maintenance slot in which you can capture the annual maintenance payable but that doesn't really capture the licensing model.

At the moment, you have 2 options. 1 is to capture the license in the description field of the product in question. Alternatively, if what you are trying to do is to define a set of license models (GNU GPL, Mozilla, etc.) I would suggest that we create some new constructs in the EA_Support section of the meta model and relate instances of these to the relevant products. If this is what you need, let's discuss the requirements fully and then we can define an extension pack to provide these constructs. We've recently been discussing what's the right approach to capturing license models in relation to their cost so this is very timely!

Jonathan

[gioppo]

Alternatively, if what you are trying to do is to define a set of license models (GNU GPL, Mozilla, etc.) I would suggest that we create some new constructs in the EA_Support section of the meta model and relate instances of these to the relevant products. If this is what you need, let's discuss the requirements fully and then we can define an extension pack to provide these constructs. We've recently been discussing what's the right approach to capturing license models in relation to their cost so this is very timely!

Yes this is the right need.
I would like to see something like "Supplier" that is called licence (where to place the licence desciption, the fact that is osi approved or not, the cost per unit, the unit of measurement (per CPU, per PC, per user).
Done that a link to the product would be nice.
This way I could have a report to list all the OSS software I've got or the software with the cost higher than X maybe.
The really wanderful thing about the Essential project is that you can fill the holes a bit at a time, but you can get some return immediately, so stuff like the licence description is something that could be fille with time, but could be useful to legal office.
Also something to relate if a licence can be mixed with other (GPL compatibility for example) also this could be an association between licences.

[jonathan.carter]

The really wanderful thing about the Essential project is that you can fill the holes a bit at a time, but you can get some return immediately, so stuff like the licence description is something that could be fille with time, but could be useful to legal office.
Also something to relate if a licence can be mixed with other (GPL compatibility for example) also this could be an association between licences.

You are exactly right. That's one of key things that we've aimed for. It means that even different people with different areas of expertise can fill in the parts that they understand - and it all comes together in the model.

As for the license, thing. I'm going to design an extension to the meta model that will work as we've discussed. I'll then post it with instructions of how to apply this pack to your repository.

Jonathan

[gioppo]

Really thanks.
I'm filling ther model with some open source products and suppliers.
I'll pass it when finished.

[jason.powell]

Thanks Gioppo. It will be great to see it and share it with the community.

Thanks,

Jason
(Essential Project Team)

[gioppo]

When you have the hack for adding the licence let me know so that I'll include it in the repos.
Also let me know if you could use the export used for the viewer to get the data so that I can send it to you.

[jonathan.carter]

Just wanted to make sure that you had seen the proposed design for the License Model extension.
See this forum posting
In line with the Community Process that I described in a recent blog, we'd be very interested in your comments and I'll shortly be posting a meta model update to test out this extension.

Thanks

Jonathan