[euopendata] Study says charge for public data...

Thu Jan 13 14:55:36 UTC 2011

On 01/13/2011 03:00 PM, James McKinney wrote:
>> I'm sorry, but I don't think this is the relevant point. Non-Commercial
>> restrictions, for instance, exclude the possibility of re-using the released
>> material in Wikipedia (or any other project using a license such a CC BY-SA
>> or CC BY): this is far from being a problem of private enterprise
>> free-riding on taxpayers' money.
> No, CC BY-SA and CC BY allow for commercial use. It's CC BY-NC-SA and
> CC BY-NC that restrict commercial use. Wikipedia allows commercial use
> of its text content (images are separately licensed).
Of course, CC BY-SA and CC BY do allow for commercial use. This is 
actually part of my point.

To be more explicit, if the government - for instance - adopts a CC 
BY-NC or CC BY-NC-SA, then the stuff it releases is not compatible with 
projects, such as Wikipedia, which use open licenses (in the sense of 
the open knowledge definition), such as CC BY or CC BY-SA.
On the other hand, if - as I recommend - the government uses CC BY (or 
CC 0, even better!), then what it releases can be used in any kind of 
projects, both commercial and non-commercial (and in projects like 
Wikipedia, which are non-commercial in themselves, but which allow for 
commercial re-use downstream).

Best,

Federico