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

Sun Feb 21 14:27:30 UTC 2010

dear all,

At risk of fanning the flames (only two people unsubscribed from the 
list as a result, not a bad conflagration) i'd like to add comments.

On 16/02/2010 16:23, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> On 9 February 2010 16:32, Richard Fairhurst<richard at systemed.net>  wrote:
>> To get back to the original argument, my personal view is that neither CC,
>> nor OKFN, nor FSF or whoever should offer NC options with any of their
>> licenses. Discriminating against a field of endeavour isn't "open", you
>> might as well have a "no-copying" licence. But that's not the same as saying
>> CC0 should be the only game in town for factual data.
>
> All I want to say is: "hear-hear" -- nicely distiled these are exactly
> my views on this topic ...

One of the OSGeo incubation criteria is that a project must license in 
accordance with the OSI open source definition. This is clear on "no 
restriction on fields of endeavour" ... "We want commercial users to 
join our community, not feel excluded"
  http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

There's no suggestion that OSGeo activity is anti-commercial - the 
projects underpin probably billions of money units of value creation.
Commercial activity does not have to be proprietary to be successful.

Happy to hear Ian Turton's note on research use of OpenStreetmap data.
Recently saw slides for a useful presentation from Lance McKee at OGC on 
open geodata for research use, including
"Seventeen reasons why geospatial research data should be open"
http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=37254

Cf. also the Panton Principles for research data which launched the 
other day: http://pantonprinciples.org/

be well,

jo
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