- From: Sören Auer <auer@informatik.uni-leipzig.de>
- Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:17:19 +0200
- To: Pascal Hitzler <pascal.hitzler@wright.edu>
- CC: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, SW-forum Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
Am 01.06.2013 18:58, schrieb Pascal Hitzler: > Concerning the definition given on the website you indicate: > > "A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and > redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute > and/or share-alike." > > - let me play devil's advocate here and suggest an alternative > definition, just to make a point: > > "A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and > redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute > and/or share-alike, or to paying suitable royalties to the data creator > or provider." > > But more seriously - you probably see the point: A phrasing like > > "A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and > redistribute it — subject to no restrictions" > > would be a more serious alternative. As soon as you make restrictions, > things get tricky - and this is exactly one of the points in the paper > we circulated. Attribution or share-alike can already be showstoppers, > and for some context can render LOD/LD *non-reusable* - in which case > the term "open" appears to be rather misleading. Sure, requirements like "attribution" and "share-alike" are showstoppers for *some* business models, but definitely not for data-driven businesses in general. Let's always look at the open-source analog (they are a few years ahead of us): Most open-source licenses require attribution and quite some prominent ones (such as GPL) also sharing-alike and still open-source software is big business (look at Red Hat, the 1Bn open-source business IBM makes every year with Linux alone or all the OS software used and produced by Internet and Web giants). The share-alike requirement actually has two sides, it can prevent some business from reusing the data, but also gives the original data publisher a competitive advantage, since he can dual license his data commercially without the share-alike requirement, so I think it is at least as much a business facilitator as it is a showstopper. Sören
Received on Saturday, 1 June 2013 17:17:49 UTC