[od-discuss] Status of Vancouver and Surrey OGL variants

Thu Nov 27 00:59:41 UTC 2014

Hi Dave,

"Because of this clause, no information can be assumed to be licenced under
the BC-OGL or variants which contain the same clause."

I don't think that's quite what we're saying.

Speaking for myself, I am saying:

This clause makes it uncertain whether the license applies.

Herb

On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 4:33 PM, Wrate, David GCPE:EX <David.Wrate at gov.bc.ca
> wrote:

>  Hi all,
>
> At the risk of being overly simplistic, is it accurate to say:
>
> Because of this clause, no information can be assumed to be licenced under
> the BC-OGL or variants which contain the same clause.
>
> My apologies if I appear a bit thick on this… only want to very clearly
> understand the view.
>
> David
>
>
>
> *From:* herb.lainchbury at gmail.com [mailto:herb.lainchbury at gmail.com] *On
> Behalf Of *Herb Lainchbury
> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 26, 2014 9:23 AM
> *To:* Wrate, David GCPE:EX
> *Cc:* od-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> *Subject:* Re: [od-discuss] Status of Vancouver and Surrey OGL varients
>
>
>
> Hi David,
>
>
>
> The UK-OGL clause doesn't force data consumers to dive into the
> legislation.
>
>
>
> It says, "Information that has not been accessed by way of publication or
> disclosure under information access legislation (including the Freedom of
> Information Acts for the UK and Scotland) by or with the consent of the
> Information Provider;"
>
>
>
> So, if it's in their catalogue, consent is given, and I can use it.
>
>
>
> The Surrey clause says, "Information or Records not accessible under the
> Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (B.C.);".
>
>
>
> To consumers this means they now have to dive into the Act to see if what
> they want to consume is accessible or not.
>
>
>
> Herb
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Wrate, David GCPE:EX <
> David.Wrate at gov.bc.ca> wrote:
>
> Hello all, David Wrate from the Province of BC here.
>
> I’d like to further understand how the FOI clause affect non-conformance.
>
> I ask only because the UK v3.0 has been deemed conformant and contains an
> FOI clause. Is there subtlety in the language of its clause that makes the
> difference?
>
> Seeking to understand and improve.
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> *From:* od-discuss [mailto:od-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] *On Behalf
> Of *Herb Lainchbury
> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 26, 2014 8:19 AM
> *To:* od-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> *Subject:* Re: [od-discuss] Status of Vancouver and Surrey OGL varients
>
>
>
> "2.2 Acceptable Conditions
>
> The license shall not limit, make uncertain, or otherwise diminish the
> permissions required in Section 2.1 except by the following allowable
> conditions:"
>
>
>
> I think the exemption in question makes it uncertain whether or not the
> permissions are in fact granted.  And it does so in a way that is not one
> of the Acceptable Ways.
>
>
>
> While there may be other issues, this one seems fairly obvious to me and
> would cause me to vote no.
>
>
>
> BTW, this is not only an issue with the BC-derived licenses, other
> provinces (Ontario, Alberta) have also forked the Canadian license in ways
> that I think make it uncertain whether permissions are granted.
>
>
>
> There are also examples of forks of the Canadian license that do not have
> this issue.  The city of Winnipeg (
> https://data.winnipeg.ca/open-data-licence ) and the Office of the
> Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC (
> https://www.oipc.bc.ca/media/15403/open-government-licence.pdf ) are two
> such examples.
>
>
>
> I am considering calling for a vote on this in the next few days.  Further
> discussion is still welcome.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com>
> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 12:40 AM, Paul Norman <penorman at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/20/2014 12:26 AM, Herb Lainchbury wrote:
>
> I will start off this discussion, with what I think is the main issue with
> the OGL-Surrey-1.0 license
> <http://data.surrey.ca/pages/open-government-licence-surrey>, which is
> one of the statements in the Exemptions section.
>
> Namely:
>
>
>
> This license does not grant you any right to use:
>
> * Information or Records not accessible under the Freedom of Information
> and Protection of Privacy Act (B.C.);
>
>
>
> The basic problem that I see with this exemption is that if this license
> is applied to a work, I have no idea if the license applies without
> consulting and understanding the Freedom of Information and Protection of
> Privacy Act (B.C.) and figuring out if the work I want to access is or is
> not accessible under this Act.
>
> FIPPA has two relevant classes of information - what must not be shared,
> and what may be shared, but doesn't have to be. It's not obvious which
> class of information the license refers to. I believe it's the former.
>
> My solution to this issue has been to ask the government releasing the
> dataset if what I wanted was accessible under the FIPPA act, to which
> they've always answered yes. In case of a no or a non-answer, I'd have to
> FOI the information I needed, showing that it was accessible.
>
> The above is a stupid process to have to go through to establish FIPPA
> accessibility.
>
>
>
> Hmm, I said I would listen and probably abstain, but I'm switching to the
> BC-derived licenses are non-open and I will vote no if they come up for a
> vote. If the licenses by themselves aren't enough to allow any user to make
> any use, they aren't open.
>
>
>
>  A bigger issue to me is that I've been told by governments using them
> that the OGL-BC derived licenses (OGL-Surrey, OGL-Vancouver) are not
> compatible with CC BY, ODC-BY or the ODbL. Because the Canadian OGL
> variants are essentially only usable by a single government, this leaves me
> with an impossible situation for making works from multiple sources and my
> work.
>
>
>
> That's also extremely annoying but wouldn't make the licenses non-open per
> the definition.
>
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>

-- 

Herb Lainchbury, Dynamic Solutions
250.704.6154
http://www.dynamic-solutions.com
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