« Small steps to using the Platform | Main | A conversation with LibLime's Joshua Ferraro »
25 September 2007
Open Data Commons
Posted by Richard Wallis at September 25, 2007 05:22 PM
Here at Talis we are passionate about several things - the power of community, sharing innovation, the place of libraries in the on & off line society of today and tomorrow, taking your services to where your users are, and..... oh yes the The Talis Platform.
As several of my colleagues and I have often said before, one of the key factors holding back our community opening up for the benefit of all is licensing. The contribution of library data to joint initiatives, or the opening up of your data for all to view and use, seems to be fraught with fear and trepidation about the sky falling in if you let your data escape in to the wild.
These concerns were addressed when we launched Talis Source, enabling data freely contributed by libraries to be used for wider purposes, by the Talis Community Licence. As we said at the time:
This draft licence builds upon our existing commitment to free contribution into and basic discovery from Talis Platform-powered applications such as Talis Source, and codifies our intentions for data shared via the Platform in an open and unambiguous manner.
I am therefore delighted to bring to your attention Paul Miller's announcement on our sister blog Nodalities that the process of opening up this licence to the community for all to gain the benefits has taken another major step forward.
Building upon our original work on the TCL, we recently provided funding to lawyers Jordan Hatcher and Charlotte Waelde. They were tasked with validating the principles behind the license, developing an effective expression of those principles that could be applied beyond the database-aware shores of Europe, and working with us to identify a suitable home in which this new licence could be hosted, nurtured, and carried forward for the benefit of stakeholders far outside Talis.
Today, Jordan posted the latest draft of this license (now going by the name 'Open Data Commons'), some rationale, and pointers to various ways in which he - and we - are seeking input and further validation.
The principles of Open Data are not only applicable to the library community, but most of the scenarios that would benefit from such a license do crop up as key concerns in or world.
Again as Paul says
As my colleague Rob (again!) has argued, curators of data need an option on the permissions continuum between free-for-all and locked down. The Open Data Commons, née Talis Community Licence, offers that option.
Take a look. Think about how you would use it. Consider what sort of administrative framework you would want behind such a license. Join the conversation.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blogs.talis.com/mt/mt-tb.r280.cgi/1006
