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RE: License for DCAT vocabulary?

From: Cox, Simon (L&W, Clayton) <Simon.Cox@csiro.au>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 02:38:50 +0000
To: Philippe Le Hégaret <plh@w3.org>, pedro winstley <pedro.win.stan@googlemail.com>
CC: Riccardo Albertoni <albertoni@ge.imati.cnr.it>, Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran <alejandra.gonzalez.beltran@gmail.com>, Dataset Exchange Working Group <public-dxwg-wg@w3.org>
Message-ID: <ME2PR01MB536244D25FCB2E39C8DE7AE388360@ME2PR01MB5362.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com>
CC0 on the ontology provides the possibility of direct adoption by Wikidata, which would be better than their typical approach of cloning the ontology into their own namespace. 

But as a general principle, we should put the minimum barriers to reuse possible.  In my opinion CC0 is actually fine, provided we ensure that the URI of every vocabulary elements will de-reference to an artefact that contains attribution information. 

Simon 

-----Original Message-----
From: Philippe Le Hégaret <plh@w3.org> 
Sent: Thursday, 16 January, 2020 01:11
To: Cox, Simon (L&W, Clayton) <Simon.Cox@csiro.au>; pedro winstley <pedro.win.stan@googlemail.com>
Cc: Riccardo Albertoni <albertoni@ge.imati.cnr.it>; Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran <alejandra.gonzalez.beltran@gmail.com>; Dataset Exchange Working Group <public-dxwg-wg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: License for DCAT vocabulary?

One question related to the use of CC0 for wikidata.

I found the following:
[[
All data on Wikidata is released under Creative Commons CC0 (public domain).
]]
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Data_donation#Wikidata_and_copyright


I don't understand why the vocabulary files have to be under CC0, unless we plan to submit those to wikidata.

I would expect that for the formats used to submit data to wikidata don't have to be under CC0 themselves, while the data files using those formats have to.

Am I missing something?

Philippe

On 12/16/2019 6:55 PM, Cox, Simon (L&W, Clayton) wrote:
> (Note that I distinguish between the Rec document - which definitely 
> should have the W3C license - and the RDF representation of the 
> vocabulary. The RDF is not software, nor is it a traditional document 
> for which most licenses were constructed. IMO CC0 is best for the 
> RDF.)
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cox, Simon (L&W, Clayton)
> Sent: Tuesday, 17 December, 2019 10:52
> To: Philippe Le Hégaret <plh@w3.org>; pedro winstley 
> <pedro.win.stan@googlemail.com>
> Cc: Riccardo Albertoni <albertoni@ge.imati.cnr.it>; Alejandra 
> Gonzalez-Beltran <alejandra.gonzalez.beltran@gmail.com>; Dataset 
> Exchange Working Group <public-dxwg-wg@w3.org>
> Subject: RE: License for DCAT vocabulary?
> 
> This piece I would like to clarify:
> 
>> provided that you include the following on ALL copies of the work 
>> **or portions thereof**
> 
> Unclear what this means in connection with someone using elements from an RDF vocabulary.
> Does there have to be a license statement on every mention?
> Clearly that would be silly, but the license could be read that way.
> It is concerns like this which have led Wikidata to reject any ontology that has a license more onerous than CC-0.
> 
> While I think that Wikidata are being a bit extreme, I would concede their main concern.
> If we want the RDF vocabaulary to be widely used, then the license should be maximally permissive.
> (The 'attribution' requirement is met effectively through the URIs 
> being in a W3 domain, which can be dereferenced to get details of the 
> license information.)
> 
> Simon
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Philippe Le Hégaret <plh@w3.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, 17 December, 2019 07:00
> To: pedro winstley <pedro.win.stan@googlemail.com>
> Cc: Riccardo Albertoni <albertoni@ge.imati.cnr.it>; Alejandra 
> Gonzalez-Beltran <alejandra.gonzalez.beltran@gmail.com>; Dataset 
> Exchange Working Group <public-dxwg-wg@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: License for DCAT vocabulary?
> 
> Actually, after checking with our legal, it appears that we're 
> currently infringing the Working Group charter for all of the 
> publications of DCAT
> 2 since the FPWD in 2018. We didn't catch this up at the time (oops).
> 
> [[
> This Working Group will use the W3C Document license for all its deliverables.
> ]]
> https://www.w3.org/2017/dxwg/charter

> 
> Now, this wording is also in the proposed charter of the Working Group:
>    https://www.w3.org/2019/11/proposed-dx-wg-charter-2019.html

> 
> So, I suggest that folks carefully review the charter and propose to change this to:
> [[
> This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.
> ]]
> 
> Assuming we do update the new charter, the Director can then approves the REC with the permissive license. Using CC BY 4 for the TTL will be fine.
> 
> Philippe
> 
> On 12/16/2019 2:08 PM, pedro winstley wrote:
>> https://github.com/catalogue-of-services-isa/CPSV-AP/issues/38#issuec

>> o
>> mment-566148135
>>
>>
>> It would be sensible to coordinate these discussions
>>
>> CC BY 4.0  makes sense
>>
>> On Mon, 16 Dec 2019 at 18:10, Philippe Le Hégaret <plh@w3.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/16/2019 12:53 PM, Riccardo Albertoni wrote:
>>>> Hi Alejandra,
>>>>
>>>> At the moment in the DCAT TTL and the other RDF serializations, we 
>>>> have
>>> the
>>>> statement
>>>>
>>>>> dct:license <
>>>> https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2015/copyright-software-and-doc

>>>> u
>>>> ment
>>>>
>>>> ;"
>>>>
>>>> If I remember well, we inserted this link when validating of DCAT 
>>>> by mean of OOPS http://oops.linkeddata.es/.

>>>>
>>>> I do not know if we want to change it or if you think the license 
>>>> should also be mentioned elsewhere.
>>>
>>> Use it. It's the same one as the DCAT2 document itself. You cannot 
>>> be more restrictive than this license in any case. If you have 
>>> reasons to be more restrictive, I'll be curious to know why.
>>>
>>> Philippe
>>>
>>>
>>>>     Cheers,
>>>>     Riccardo
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 16 Dec 2019 at 18:25, Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran < 
>>>> alejandra.gonzalez.beltran@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>
>>>>> We have not assigned a license to the DCAT vocabulary and I think 
>>>>> it
>>> would
>>>>> be important to set one.
>>>>>
>>>>> I was trying to check if W3C has a policy around this, but I found 
>>>>> this thread from the PROV list:
>>>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/site-comments/2018Dec/0004.htm

>>>>> l but it seems that there was no conclusion.
>>>>>
>>>>> FYI, many of the OBO foundry ontologies
>>>>> (http://www.obofoundry.org/)
>>> use
>>>>> CC-BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which I 
>>>>> think
>>> would
>>>>> be an appropriate license?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> Alejandra
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by 
>>>>> *E.F.A. Project* <http://www.efa-project.org>, and is believed to 
>>>>> be clean.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
> 
Received on Thursday, 16 January 2020 02:39:12 UTC

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