[od-discuss] introduction

Tue Aug 17 14:16:02 UTC 2010

That's a great point, Jonathan. Our list was developed primarily to serve as
a tool in our discussions with US legislators, so it's definitely oriented
toward that.  It seems quite likely to me that different approaches will be
necessary for different legal environments.

Regarding the specific CC/public domain question: in my opinion the right
approach is probably to ask for as much as we think we can get, without
making claims so strong that they scare the audience off.  You can see this
reflected in the point concerning fees, which doesn't come right out and say
"government information ought to be free!" lest the words "UNFUNDED MANDATE"
start flashing in front of the reader's eyes.  But different bureaucracies
may well have different sensitivities.

Tom

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>wrote:

> The one point I anticipate that OKF might have slightly different
> approach for is point 8. on licensing -- especially regarding
> Attribution. E.g. is CC-BY acceptable for government documents, or is
> it public domain or the highway? While US Federal government is easy,
> will all state/local government relinquish rights for gov data in US?
> In EU there are quite strong traditions of copyright in government
> data. E.g. in UK lots is released under very permissive
> attribution-only license, and we would be keen to call that 'open'
> still.
>
> What do you think? Part of my motivation for a new set of principles
> for open government data is because the original 8 are quite US
> centric, particularly regarding licenses...
>
> All the best,
>
> Jonathan
>
> On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 6:01 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Tom Lee <tlee at sunlightfoundation.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello all -- just a quick note to introduce myself.  I'm Tom Lee,
> director
> >> of Sunlight Labs, the technical arm of the Sunlight Foundation.  I'm
> looking
> >> forward to being a part of this important discussion, and hope that
> you'll
> >> all feel free to reach out to me individually if there's some way that I
> or
> >> Sunlight can be of help to you.
> >
> > I reach out!
> >>
> >> Rufus has already posted our just-released set of ten open data
> principles
> >> (
> http://sunlightfoundation.com/policy/documents/ten-open-data-principles/)
> >> to this list, so perhaps I ought to begin by mentioning it. First: I'd
> be
> >> glad to hear any thoughts or suggestions for improvement that it might
> >> prompt.  We're offering it in the spirit of evolutionary enhancement of
> work
> >> that Sunlight had previously participated in -- a necessary update to a
> tool
> >> we'd already been using.  Our experience lobbying the government has
> >> convinced us that achieving openness is more about fostering a norm than
> >> about finalizing a spec, which makes us less worried about the dangers
> of
> >> proliferating standards, so long as they're broadly in agreement (though
> I
> >> certainly understand and respect the fact that others may disagree).
> >
> > I agree with all of this. I think your principles are at the right level
> and
> > (until I have had time to think more) seem reasonably comprehensive.  You
> > are probably aware of our work on the Panton Principles
> > (http://pantonprinciples.org/ ) for Scientific Data which have a
> slightly
> > different emphasis (partly beacuse of the different approach to
> publishing
> > science). I think they interleave well with yours (and could, for
> example,
> > work for government scientific data).
> >
> > We felt it important to get principles rather than hard rules (licences,
> > standards) and I agree about trying to foster norms. What is clear (at
> least
> > in science) is that the practice of data publication has a lot or
> wrinkles
> > that are not present in publishing manuscripts/documents. You allude to
> some
> > of them - open software for reading, for example. Complex data sets are
> > often put together purely for the use of an initially closed community
> and
> > then it becomes difficult to make them available more widely.  So an
> > additional principle might be to plan for distribution when the data set
> is
> > conceived. Of course that isn't always possible.
> >
> > The details matter and so I have drafted a set of discussion papers for
> > various aspects of Open Data - the Panton Papers - which anyone is
> welcome
> > to hack. I think any of these principle-based approaches will need a lot
> of
> > supporting material.
> >
> > P.
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Tom
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> od-discuss mailing list
> >> od-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> >> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/od-discuss
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Peter Murray-Rust
> > Reader in Molecular Informatics
> > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> > University of Cambridge
> > CB2 1EW, UK
> > +44-1223-763069
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > od-discuss mailing list
> > od-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/od-discuss
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
> http://identi.ca/jwyg
>
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