[ckan-discuss] Data Hub should state reason for a dataset being considered non-open

Tue Oct 25 05:04:32 BST 2011

I would prefer a 3 value logic, rather than the 2 value that we currently have.

 - Open
 - Unknown
 - Closed

A 2 valued logic was probably a design decision to make things clear,
but often it means that thedatahub.org is making factual assertions
which are incorrect. If data are open, but a resource has not been
recorded in our database, then we are (in a manner of speaking)
defaming a data provider by saying they're closed when they're not.

On 25 October 2011 07:28, David Read <david.read at okfn.org> wrote:
> On 24 October 2011 18:55, Richard Cyganiak <richard at cyganiak.de> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Many datasets on the Data Hub have a generic “Not Open” box:
>>
>> [[
>> This dataset is Not Open. Either because it is not openly licensed or is
>> missing downloadable resources.
>> ]]
>>
>> I feel that some more detail here would help. This generic message can
>> mean very different things:
>>
>> - The contributors who created the Data Hub record didn't specify the
>> license
>>
>> - The publisher of the dataset published it without an explicit license
>>
>> - There is an explicit license, but it is not considered open, such as
>> CC-BY-NC
>>
>> I am sometimes sending Data Hub URLs to people who ask me about sources
>> for particular kinds of data, and have received knee-jerk replies like, “But
>> that dataset is not open!” when in fact the license information was simply
>> left empty in the Data Hub record or was noncommercial.
>>
>>
>> May I suggest three improvements:
>>
>>
>> 1. If there is an explicit but non-OKD compliant license, such as
>> CC-BY-NC, then this should be stated explicitly, perhaps:
>>
>> “This dataset is Not Open. License: Creative Commons Attribution
>> Noncommerical. This is not an open license as it does not meet the Open
>> Knowledge Definition.”
>>
>> The current approach, which is to simply not show the license at all if
>> it's not OKD-compliant, does a bit of a disservice to site visitors IMO.
>> CC-BY-NC might just be good enough for some visitors. Why hide this
>> information?
>>
>>
>> 2. If the license is marked as “Other::License Not Specified”, then this
>> should be stated explicitly, perhaps:
>>
>> “This dataset is Not Open. It is published without an explicit license,
>> the publisher reserves all rights to the dataset.”
>>
>>
>> 3. If the license field was left empty by the contributor of the Data Hub
>> record, then again this should be stated explicitly, perhaps:
>>
>> “This dataset is Not Open. The license of this dataset is unknown or
>> unspecified. Start an enquiry on IsItOpenData »”
>
> +1 to all this from me.
>
>>
>> (I'm not sure how “is missing downloadable resources” should factor into
>> those categories.)
>
> Yes we could say that "This dataset is Not Open. A download link or API
> providing full access is unknown or not specified."
> David
>>
>> Thanks for considering this,
>> Richard
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>
>
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