[od-discuss] OGL-Canada proposal feedback from the Open Definition Advisory Council

Sun Mar 3 00:00:02 UTC 2013

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 9:27 AM, Levene, Mark <Mark.Levene at tbs-sct.gc.ca> wrote:
> We are, however, very interested in having our Licence verified as OD-conformant. From our perspective, there remains one outstanding issue: we're still not convinced of the rationale for moving "This Licence does not grant you any right to use: . Information subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents and trademarks" to the exemptions section. As was pointed out in the discussion, the Exemptions are all about types of information not about how to use the information.

I agree with Herb's comments re official status and endorsement, sent
Feb 6. But I note upon re-reviewing this, a potential confusion.

We suggested moving non-endorsement to exemptions, but the comment re
"information subject to other intellectual property rights" (which the
draft already has under exemptions) was a concern about the
potentially broad and difficult to interpret exemption caused by that
bullet:

    “This Licence does not grant you any right to use: … Information
subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents and
trademarks.” This might be placed even more strongly in the exemption
category if merely stating that no patents are trademark permissions
are granted, rather than removing any right to use information subject
to any of these.

In other words, as stated, one has to wonder if licensed information
is subject to any other restrictions, in which case no permission is
granted. Ideally license would leave whatever other restrictions exist
in place, but not remove all grants if any restrictions at all exist.
This isn't necessarily a critique of the proposal's compliance with
the open definition, but rather of minimizing barriers to the
effective use of data released under eventual OGL-C.

> None of the types of information in the Exemptions clause should ever see the light of day because there are (and will continue to be) procedural checks and balances for government departments to meet prior to release of data or information. Other than attribution, all we're saying is that you're not allowed to say that you officially represent the Government of Canada. That's not something you can control internally. Otherwise, you can do as you see fit with the data. We think this meets the open definition and we'd value your opinions.

As I've said in previous on-list discussion of the OGL-C proposal, I'm
not certain a "you're not allowed to say that you officially represent
the Government of Canada" clause (which presumably gets back to the
endorsement and status issue Herb commented on) would make the license
non-compliant, but it definitely isn't ideal, and I suspect other Open
Definition Advisory Council members feel more strongly than I do that
the clause is problematic, perhaps non-Open. But the above seems to
re-emphasize that it isn't instrumental anyway: of course I can't
claim to represent the Government of Canada; I am not an agent of the
Government of Canada, and I'd have to be crazy to think that by using
data from the Government of Canada under the permissions granted by
the OGL-C, I would be duly authorized as one. I might not understand
some nuance though, particularly what "not something you can control
internally" means.

Thanks,
Mike