Re: There's No Money in Linked Data

On 6/1/2013 1:17 PM, Sören Auer wrote:
> 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.

Yes. But what you say confirms my argument that "open" is not so boolean 
in meaning :)

Pascal.

> Sören




-- 
Prof. Dr. Pascal Hitzler
Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH
pascal@pascal-hitzler.de   http://pascal-hitzler.de/
Semantic Web Textbook: http://www.semantic-web-book.org/
Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/

Received on Saturday, 1 June 2013 17:46:40 UTC