[od-discuss] [OTT-GOSLING] They gave us Lady Gaga; we gave them the Open Government Data Camp

Wed Nov 10 15:37:30 UTC 2010

Dear Richard,

Have you seen our definition of open data which we've been busy
building consensus around for several years?

  http://www.opendefinition.org/

E.g. see: http://pantonprinciples.org/

I spoke to you about it briefly in Barcelona a few years ago. It would
be good to try to avoid splitting work on this if at all possible.

Would you (for example) be interested in advising the existing
definition on any possible improvements?

Indeed, you may also be interested in these licenses for data:

  http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
  http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/

All the best,

Jonathan

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org> wrote:
> What's happening with "open data" seems to resemble what "open source"
> does to the idea of free software.  "Open" is a warm fuzzy term that
> is easy to use to give an aura of friendliness to any activity.  Many
> software developers call their programs "open source" even though they
> do not fit the official definition of same; the natural meaning of the
> word seems to invite this sort of stretching.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
> describes how this happens with "open source".
>
> In the US, a collection of facts made by following a rule is not
> copyrightable.  Once it is published, anyone can use it in any
> fashion.  In Europe, there is a stupid data base monopoly law which
> covers collections of data.  (It is quite different from copyright
> law.)  Thus, data published in Europe is not available for others to
> use, and some freedom criteria are needed.
>
> I will look at drawing up a "free data" definition.
>
> --
> Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin St
> Boston MA 02110
> USA
> www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg