[Odrl-version2] New ODRL v2.0 Model

[Steven Rowat]

Hi all,

Great to have the 2.0 model at a public stage. Good to see the UML inclusion and the new Legal entity.

My first question agrees with Renato's, 

>1 - Should we have a "Change History" as the table of contents says?  
>(or too many changes!)

and I propose a short way of doing this: How about, under Change History, put something like:
"Sections D, B, F [or whatever] are added." 
"Sections Q, M, F have major changes."
"Sections A, Y, Z are substantially unchanged."

I think would aid others (and still might aid me!) in approaching the document.

Other question / comments (some minor, some major): 

1. What are the numbers "1" and "0", with periods and asterisks sometimes, indicating on the main model graphic?

2. Why are the reType not listed in the Rights model box? It seems like they are key players in the model - shouldn't they be visible?

3. Is it really necessary/useful to repeat the word "Model" after each section heading, ie., Rights Class Model, Asset Model, etc.  For example, with "Asset" you immediately begin using the word "entity" to refer to the Asset; I feel there's less conflict in the flow if it just went:
"2.2 Asset
"The Asset entity is aimed at identifying..."

4. Under section 2.1, I found this sentence confusing:
"Statement. The statement supports rights expressions that consists of any number of (or none of) entities from the complete model. This is aimed at scenarios..."

Two issues with this: 
   a) "...consists of any number of (or none of) entities...." reads strangely. How about: "...consists of any number of (or no) entities...."
   b) Either way, the first sentence by itself definitely needs the later sentences to explain it, but the antecdent of "This" is not clear. It could be taken to men "Statement" entity itself, but I think this is not what you meant. In other words, if you mean "this" and the following to be explaining the "none" of case only, I suggest using "...the latter (no entities from the model)..." instead, as in:

"Statement. The statement supports rights expressions that consists of any number of (or no) entities from the complete model. The latter (no entities from the model) is aimed at scenarios..."

If, on the other hand, you do mean the entire Statement entity exists to have this function, then I'm still confused about what Statement's function is when it *does* have rights entities from the complete model.

5. In the 2.1 "Next Rights" paragraph, I believe you've left out the quotation marks around several words in the following sentence:

<Within an existing rights expression with the type statement, offer, or agreement,....>

Shouldn't this read:
<Within an existing rights expression with the type "statement", "offer", or "agreement",

6. Section 2.2, Asset.
I don't understand this sentence explaining inheritance:
<The Asset entity may contain an Inherit entity that indicates that the rights assigned to the asset pointed to by the Inherit entity are also assigned to the Asset entity>. 

It seems to make a circle. I don't understand what is inherited from what - it sounds to me from this that the Asset is inheriting rights from the Asset. Either that or rights from somewhere else that are assigned to the Asset are being re-assigned to the Asset by inheritance - but if they're already assigned, why re-assign them to the same place?  

7. Section 2.3
This sentence:
"In this case, the Party entity must identify a group of people."

I believe would be more correct to say:
"In this case, the Party entity must identify a group of people and/or legal entities", since you have been careful to define Party in this way.

8. Section 2.4.3
Typo
"who is responsible for fulfill the Duty"
should read either:
>who is responsible for fulfilling the Duty" or "who is responsible to fulfill the Duty" .

It occurs again later in the same paragraph.

9. Section 2.6, Legal
  a) I feel "jurisdiction" and "dispute resolution" need to be listed separately; they are distinct entities.
  b) I'm not sure how "dispute resolution" can be carefully and well-specified in a near-future timeframe. It seems it's a big concept that might be something to be worked on for ODRL 3.0
  c) I don't think "Human readable notes" belongs in Legal. I think it's nice to have the notes in ODRL 2 though. Could it be put somewhere else?

10. Section 2.7, Negotiation.
I feel the same as about "dispute resolution". 


I'll go personal here with a final comment. I've been hoping for ODRL-mediated transactions on the web 10 years; since long before I even knew about ODRL. And it would be nice to have it do everything including open cans and take the dog for a walk. And maybe it will eventually. :-)  But I think it's doing great right now, even without Dispute Resolution and Negotiations (but definitely including Legal), and I'm for putting version 2 out without those two. Perhaps they can be added in an update - a version 2.5, say.

I haven't read the examples yet, but  this is too long anyway, so I'll send.

Great work Suzanne and all!

steven rowat