Policy Types & Lifecycle

[benedictws]

ODRL defines three policy types:

1. Agreement: where the assigner and assignee are specified and the rules are in force.
2. Offer: where only the assigner is specified and the rules are offered up for an assignee to agree (and so create an Agreement)
3. Set: where neither the assigner nor the assignee is specified (nor likely known). Acts as a template for future Offers and Agreements (especially relevant in cases of redistribution and derivation).

I suggest we add one more: a Request, where only the assignee is specified. Here the rules are offered up for an assigner to agree - effectively an Offer in reverse.

[benedictws]

In terms of managing these policies through their life-cycle, we might also want to give them a status. This slight adaption of Phil Rimell's work seems to cover the bases:

• Draft Work in progress or for review or approval.
• Cancelled Abandoned, never published.
• Published Live, operative (subject to effective dates), available for new users.
• Obsolete Operative (subject to effective dates) for existing use/users, not available for new use/users.
• EOL End Of Life, removed, no longer valid, unusable.

[durenma]

Requests and Offers, along with Drafts, would not be binding, and could not impact digital rights. I'm not sure of the benefit of these terms. EOL could be covered by Cancelled status, if we want to avoid unnecessary complexity.