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17 July 2007
A good reason to license your 'open data' ?
Posted by Paul Miller at July 17, 2007 10:44 AM
Digital Curation Centre Director Chris Rusbridge offers an interesting Open Data-related post over on the Digital Curation blog.
Chris' first point would appear to back our assertion (eg listen to Rob Styles make his opening statement in the Linked Data panel at WWW2007) that 'simply' throwing data out onto the web to be re-used and abused is a bad idea.
Even (especially?) if you wish data to be as widely and freely used as possible, it is important to apply an appropriate license. Such licenses make it clear to the scrupulous (who will interpret the absence of explicit permission as “All Rights Reserved”) that reuse is permissible, and can act to prevent the subsequent lock-down of 'public domain' data by those who follow. As well as the examples that Chris provides, the CDDB/Gracenote case serves as yet another warning of what happens when good intentions are not expressed with sufficient legal rigour.
The Talis Community License is one example of an explicit Open Data license, and we are working with a number of partners to 'finish' this license, rename it, and hand it off for independent upkeep moving forward. As always, I'm happy to discuss this further...
Recent podcasts with Peter Murray-Rust and Jamie Taylor also delve into this area.
Technorati Tags: Linked Data, open data, Talis, Talis Community Licence, Talis Community License, WWW2007
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