@berit.mueller: Are you able to add some web links and dates so we can explore the background to your proposal a little more easily? Also, what would the topic of your workshop be? Thanks.
I am going to sit on the fence at this point and watch the discussion evolve. Although I do have some preliminary observations:
Most, if not all, the current open energy system models are aimed primarily at public policy development, moreover, many are long haul, casting forth decades. So, on the face of it, there seems relatively little overlap between the current set of open models and the numerical needs of “energy providers, traders, and operators”. That is not to say that our mailing list does not have people specifically interested in these kinds of operational models, it does, just that they have not been a focus for the community so far. Katrin Schaber from a German Stadtwerk (municipal energy company) presented on the topic at the first openmod workshop (Schaber 2014), but as far as I know, this is the only time these kinds of operational models have been discussed.
I take it that “energy providers, traders, and operators” are normally commercial organizations. Which brings up the interesting question of the role and integration of open source software by such organizations.
Companies are increasingly mixing open source, in-house, and proprietary source code and libraries, as open source software becomes increasingly viable and sophisticated and as legal knowledge about open source licensing grows. Meeke (2017) discusses these issues at length, primarily from a US perspective. She notes that open source licensing provisions only trip when a (for-profit or non-profit) organization decides to further distribute the software in question — otherwise an organization, including an operator, trader, or consultancy, can, from an open source perspective, mix open and closed source code as much as they wish as long as the resulting model remains in-house. Notwithstanding, SaaS (software as a service) provision complicates things, when an organization offers software services “on demand” over the internet (the GNU AGPL was designed to specifically address this point).
If the Open Energy Modelling Initiative does decide to have a presence at the Prague meeting, then perhaps we should develop a draft position on the integration of open source software within commercial organizations, in this case, for operational energy models. That way we would have something to contribute, beyond simply flying our flag.
Incidentally, Meeke (2017) is highly recommended (and inexpensive), particularly for those trying to understand how GNU GPL licenses (GPL versions 2 and 3 and also their LGPL and AGPL cousins) work in practice, at least as far as current US statute and case law allows. My guess is that much of the underlying legal analysis would apply to Europe, but with further local interpretation required. On that note, try Jaeger and Metzger (2016) (beyond my German comprehension unfortunately).
References
Jaeger, Till, and Axel Metzger. (21 March 2016). Open Source Software: Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen der Freien Software [Open source software: legal framework for free software] (4th ed). CH Beck. ISBN 978-340667773-1.
Meeke, Heather. (4 April 2017). Open (source) for business: a practical guide to open source software licensing (2nd ed). North Charleston, South Carolina, USA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-154473764-5.
Schaber-2014, Katrin. (18 September 2014). Energiesystemmodelle: Taxonomie [Energy system models: taxonomy]. Munich, Germany: Stadtwerk München. Zip file.