Re: Two blog posts that may be of interest

Hi Steven,

Sorry for slow response. Busy week :)

There is JSON data available that cover the basic provisions of many of
these licences. For the Creative Commons licences this is published by CC
themselves. My personal view is that the area in most need of
standardisation is around describing attribution and other rights, to help
people conform to constraints of open licences.

This is what guided the work I did with the UK ODI on the rights statement
vocabulary:

http://schema.theodi.org/odrs/

I'm less convinced that there's a need for detailed machine readable
description of licences themselves beyond identifying the broad
requirements and constraints, e.g. whether attribution is required, etc.
Partly because I don't think any level of machine-readable description of a
license agreement will obviate the need to actually read the licence to
make sure you understand its terms.

>From an open data perspective, this is why we encourage people to use
standard, open licences because you can read it once and understand how it
applies to all the data and content you're using. The fact that the CC 4.0
suite of licences cover both data and content is a good thing:

http://theodi.org/blog/cc-40-and-open-data

A greater concern to me is licence proliferation, this has the potential to
do more harm than, e.g. standard limitation of warranty agreements. More
background here:

http://theodi.org/blog/the-proliferation-of-open-government-licences

Cheers,

L.



On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Steven Adler <adler1@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> Hi Leigh,
>
> Thanks for your excellent comments.  I was not aware of Open Licenses.
>  Looks like they have json versions.  Do we feel this is machine readable
> enough to avoid re-inventing this wheel and can instead make a
> recommendation to use it?
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Steve
>
> Motto: "Do First, Think, Do it Again"
>
>
>  From: Leigh Dodds <leigh@ldodds.com> To: Steven Adler/Somers/IBM@IBMUS
> Cc: DWBP WG <public-dwbp-wg@w3.org> Date: 05/14/2014 04:05 PM Subject: Re:
> Two blog posts that may be of interest
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Hi Steve,
>
> re: your opening paragraph:
>
> "Open Data should be Open, right? When I read "Open Data" I think it
> means the data can be used openly by anyone for any purpose. But it
> ain't so. Read the fine print in the terms and conditions and you'll
> quickly realize that Open Data really means wide open liability"
>
> I agree with sentiment, Open Data should available for anyone to use
> for any purpose. There's a clear definition [1] of what openness
> means. Cities and publishers should be encouraged to use an open
> licence or waiver when publishing their data.
>
> Those that don't, e.g. Chicago and Palo Alto, should be challenged
> about what their terms contain and/or encouraged to submit their
> license for review under the open definition [2]. This is a good way
> to highlight areas where a licence isnt not open and for them to get
> constructive feedback.
>
> However I think we should be careful about phrasing like "Open data is
> not open for business". Open data published under an open licence *is*
> suitable for business re-use, and I think we should be strict about
> how the term is used. Having a definition helps.
>
> The issue here is with "open washing" [3] and publishers sharing data
> that is claimed to be open even when it isn't.
>
> Open Data *is* open for business. But it ain't open data if its
> doesn't have an open licence. It just "accessible data" which is
> encumbered with complex and limited terms, as you note.
>
> Cheers,
>
> L.
>
>
> [1]. http://opendefinition.org/
> [2]. http://opendefinition.org/licenses/process/
> [3].
> http://blog.okfn.org/2014/03/10/open-washing-the-difference-between-opening-your-data-and-simply-making-them-available/
>
>
> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 8:27 PM, Steven Adler <adler1@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > Hi Folks,
> >
> > Here are two perspectives on the business use of Open Data.  I think we
> can
> > take up the first topic as a recommendation in our Best Practices work.
> >
> > The question is, should Open Data license terms be machine readable?
>  And if
> > so, should we (and can we) define a standard vocabulary to make it so?
> >
> >
> https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140512164919-384693-open-data-is-not-open-for-business?trk=mp-reader-card
> >
> >
> https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140514120932-384693-business-needs-open-data?trk=mp-reader-card
> >
> > Looking forward to your comments.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > Motto: "Do First, Think, Do it Again"
>
>
>
> --
> Leigh Dodds
> Freelance Technologist
> Open Data, Linked Data Geek
> t: @ldodds
> w: ldodds.com
> e: leigh@ldodds.com
>
>
>
>


-- 
Leigh Dodds
Freelance Technologist
Open Data, Linked Data Geek
t: @ldodds
w: ldodds.com
e: leigh@ldodds.com