[ckan-discuss] field for data owner?

Fri Feb 11 14:01:32 GMT 2011

2011/2/10 Olav Anders Øvrebø <olav.ovrebo at gmail.com>:
>
>
> 2011/2/10 William Waites <ww at styx.org>
>>
>> * [2011-02-10 13:30:34 +0100] Olav Anders Øvrebø <olav.ovrebo at gmail.com>
>> écrit:
>>
>> ] By the way, the "Author" field is confusing. If I am adding a package
>> that
>> ] is published by a public sector agency, I don't want to list myself as
>> "The
>> ] permanent contact name for enquiries about this particular dataset." It
>> is
>> ] also too much work to research who that contact name may be.
>>
>> There is also an equivocation on the author of the
>> metadata (ckan package) and the author of the dataset.
>> Similarly for maintainer.

No there isn't. The maintainer of the ckan package should never be in
the author or maintainer field :)

> That's true. This should be sorted out.
>>
>> I am not sure I understand what it means to "own"
>> data. Maybe it means person-with-right-to-license-
>> the-data-any-way-they-please.
>
> I guess that is what I meant by owner. Or "institution" instead of person
> (legal person?). When it comes to government data, in most cases (?) the
> institution will have this right to license the way they please.

Why wouldn't they be in the author field and the maintainer field be
for the person who is maintaining this for the community catalogue?

BTW: this all sounds like something that should become an FAQ or page
on http://wiki.ckan.net/ with a list of examples and use cases :)

>> In some cases this means
>> the original author, in some cases this right may have
>> been sold or delegated or assigned in some way exclusively
>> or not, in some cases there may be no such person (e.g.
>> wikipedia or ckan metadata).
>
> In those cases the Wikimedia Foundation and the OKF will at least be the
> original publishers of the data, or owners who have chosen to "donate" the
> data?

Yes, that's right. I think Wikimedia / Wikipedia would be listed as
the author the Wikipedia dataset with the Maintainer being whoever is
curating that dataset (not necessarily, but possibly, same as person
updating CKAN metadata). This is in fact the case with the CKAN
Wikipedia dataset, see:

<http://ckan.net/package/wikipedia>

Rufus