[geo-discuss] Geodata in CKAN and collaboration (was Re: Responding to the consultation on opening Ordnance Survey's data)

Sat Feb 6 15:50:36 UTC 2010

dear all,

On 06/02/2010 13:32, Jonathan Gray [jonathan.gray at okfn.org] wrote:
>    (i) If anyone is interested in joining a small informal group
> focusing on CKAN's support for geodata and geospatially referenced
> data - please drop me a line!

Also to note - I'm planning to draft a funding proposal on using open 
geodata to link and integrate research data, which could take in minimal 
metadata for CKAN packages of geodata, as well as OpenSearch Geo, and 
involve several projects implementing the same interfaces.

Now I'm thinking of GeoCommons.com which has done a lot in the way of 
minimal metadata and simple API search. How much free value can be 
extracted from it or given back to it?

I had a play around with the uploader. I'm wondering about the lack of 
licensing clarity in GeoCommons.

I uploaded a test shapefile that I found in a django test directory.
There were options to add metadata describing where the data came form, 
original source URLs, source authors and maintainers.
I wasn't asked to add a description of data openness.

In the boilerplate of the website there is a statement that "This data 
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License".
I wasn't asked to agree to this license while uploading data.

The upload app has a lovely second phase where you are prompted to join 
this dataset to a number of in-built boundary files, or to geocode it by 
picking the columns with addresses or placenames in, for better instant 
gratification analysis visuals.

However some of the sets of pre-cut boundary shapes are from gadm.org - 
the GADM download page states "This dataset is freely available for 
academic and other non-commercial use. Redistribution, or commercial 
use, is not allowed without prior permission."

Now this is not the first time I have seen GADM redistributed under an 
open license. But it would be good to be clear - there are some 
applications in which data openness is not negotiable.

Also, like Oscar, I would like to be able to search a geodata collection 
at shape level, not just package level.

cheers,

jo
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