Run it yourself

BesluitBron runs as a public service at besluitbron.nl, and ordinary use needs no installation at all. An organisation that cannot let its research questions leave the building can put the same software on its own infrastructure. This page says when that is worth doing, what it takes, and how to obtain the source code.

When this is worth doing

The line of enquiry stays inside. The public installation records, for every call, which tool was used, with which arguments, against which source and with which search terms, and keeps that for ninety days. The visitor's address is reduced to a network prefix; the question itself is not, because it is what makes the service accountable. An editorial office digging through a file before publication therefore leaves its line of enquiry on somebody else's server. On an own installation that log sits in the organisation's own network, with a retention the organisation sets itself.

The rate budget becomes the organisation's own. The source platforms limit per calling address: OpenBesluitvorming at sixty weighted units per minute, Officiële Bekendmakingen at a bucket of roughly a hundred requests refilling at one per second. An own installation has its own budget and does not share it with every other user of besluitbron.nl. That shows up mainly in bulk research, where thousands of document references are exported in one command.

The service cannot disappear from under the organisation. BesluitBron is free, is run by a foundation, and its terms of use state in so many words that no availability is promised. The software is licensed under the EUPL-1.2, so whoever builds on it can keep it running whatever happens to the public site.

What an own installation gives

The same connectors, the same tools and the same sources. BesluitBron keeps no copy of the documents: it reads the public source platforms and points at the original. The data on an own installation is therefore neither richer nor poorer. What changes is who runs the service and who holds the log.

What it takes

• An environment that can run containers, on amd64 or arm64;
• Outbound HTTPS connections to the source platforms that are offered;
• A disk volume for the data directory: the request log, the exports and, with own TLS, the certificate;
• Optionally PostgreSQL 18, when the settings and the log belong in a database rather than in files;
• Building the container image from the source. No ready-made image is distributed at present, see the next section.

The full procedure, including the settings that have to be set before the service is first reachable, is in the installation guide. That guide is in Dutch.

How to obtain the software

The source code is licensed under the EUPL-1.2 and is supplied on request. A request goes through the address on the contact page and is answered within two working days. There is no public repository at present; the reason is stated in the colophon. The source carries the Dockerfile the public installation is built with, for both architectures.

A ready-made container image is not distributed yet. That makes an own installation more work than pulling an image, and it is better said here than discovered after the request. Distribution of an image is being arranged; until then, the source is the route.

What changes for the organisation

The log becomes the organisation's own. The choices around it move with it: the retention, the answer to a request for access under the GDPR, and the responsibility for what it holds. The software carries settings for all of that; the judgement stays with the organisation.

The MCP addresses carry no authentication. For public data that is a deliberate choice, but an installation reachable from the open internet can be queried by anyone, on the organisation's rate budget and into the organisation's log. Whoever does not want that arranges the restriction in the network or in the reverse proxy.

Mind the label of the environment. An installation named "Production" under BesluitBron:Environment:Name and reachable from outside is offered to search engines. For an internal installation that is rarely the intention. Every other label refuses indexing, in robots.txt, in a response header and in the page itself.

What is not included

No support, no service level and no installation service. Questions go through the forum, like every other question about the product. Whoever runs the service themselves, runs it themselves.