Re: There's No Money in Linked Data

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