[od-discuss] Submitting a License to be Reviewed

Mon Aug 17 11:49:17 UTC 2015

Hello Mike,

Thank you for the email.

You can find answers to your questions below:

> On Aug 15, 2015, at 5:56 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> wrote:
> 
> On 08/09/2015 09:18 PM, James G. Kim wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> I am submitting a license to be reviewed for conformance against the Open Definition. The license I am asking to review is the Korea Open Government License (KOGL), and you can find "Use Terms Guide for KOGL" at (in PDF): http://bit.ly/KOGL-EN
> 
> I found it hard to find the actual license. Is
> http://www.kogl.or.kr/open/info/license_info/by.do it (on 2nd tab)?
> 
> Autotranslation at
> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kogl.or.kr%2Fopen%2Finfo%2Flicense_info%2Fby.do&edit-text=

The first tab of the page found at the URL is something similar to the Commons Deed of Creative Commons, and the second tab is somewhat similar to the legal code, even it says it’s terms of use. Truth be told, it’s even hard for me to find the actual license, because there is no document explicitly entitled with the word “license”. However, I think the second tab can be considered as the actual license.

>> The information required by the license approval process is as follows:
>> 
>> 1. The Rationale for the New License
>> The KOGL has been developed by the South Korean government (more precisely by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) to allow citizens' free use of public works without individual permission, promoting and facilitating the use and the reuse of public works.
>> 
>> 2. A Non-reusable License
>> Similar to the other conformant open government licenses, the KOGL can also be used only by government institutions, local governments, and public institutions in the Republic of Korea.
>> 
>> 3. Comparison to the Conformant and Non-conformant CC Licenses
>> Since the KOGL has been modeled after the Creative Commons (CC) licenses, there are four different types of licenses in the KOGL, and they are similar to CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND, and CC-BY-NC-ND licenses, respectively. But, the KOGL Type 1, which is similar to CC-BY, is the only one recommened by the government to use. All the other types are not conformant the Open Definition, so they can be listed in the Non-Conformant Licenses page.
> 
> Not pertinent to whether Type 1 is conformant, but I'm curious about
> actual use of these four types, given that they can only be used by
> Korean government institutions and Type 1 is the only one recommended by
> the government to use.

Basically, the KOGL Type 1 is the default license for public works, but there are some works that cannot be easily licensed with the KOGL Type 1. For example, if the public work includes proprietary software bought from a private company, then it cannot be released with the KOGL Type 1. So, the types other than the Type 1 are developed to give Korean government institutions a way to easily license public works even if they are not open.

>> 4. The Benefits of the KOGL
>> Even though the KOGL is non-resuable, it's supported by the law – Official Information Disclosure Act – in the Republic of Korea so that a lot of government institutions, local governments, and public institutions in Korea are encouraged to release their works under the KOGL. This move will be beneficial to Korean citizens, and this will further promote the importance of openness in Korea, contributing to the global OPEN community.
> 
> Great. Also just curious, what form does that encouragement take?

The Article 3 of the Official Information Disclosure Act says that "Any information kept and managed by public institutions shall be disclosed to the public in an active manner pursuant to this Act to ensure people's right to know.”, and this act is the basis of the Korean open government initiative so-called Government 3.0. You can find the whole Official Information Disclosure Act in English at: http://elaw.klri.re.kr/kor_service/lawView.do?hseq=29982&lang=ENG.

>> 5. Compatibility with the CC-BY License
>> As I noted before, the KOGL Type 1 is based on the Creative Commons Attribution license. However, the KOGL Type 1 has some explicit restructions on prohibited use of information protected by other laws. For example, even though the work is released under the KOGL Type 1, personal and credit information, and military secrets can not be used or re-used by others. I think those restrictions make the KOGL Type 1 a subset of the CC-BY license.
> 
> The exclusion of certain information prohibited by other law seems
> superfluous (the other laws already exist). This was extensively
> discussed regarding previous OGLs; at a glance the KOGL Type 1 includes
> even more exclusions than     those previous OGLs. Example:
> http://opendefinition.org/2013/01/31/ogl-canada-proposal-feedback/
> 
> I don't have an opinion at the moment as to KOGL Type 1's conformance,
> just flagging this for others to look closely at this item.

It can seem superfluous, but I think it is just intended to let you know that certain data cannot be released by the law. This issue can be debatable, but this article does not completely exclude, for example, “personal data” from sharing. It says it only excludes "Personal information that is protected by” related laws, such as Personal Information Protection Act, Promotion for Information Network Use and Information Protection Act, etc.

>> 6. The KOGL Website
>> As far as I know, there is no public drafting process for the license, but after the government announced the KOGL, the new Website (http://www.kogl.or.kr/ in Korean) introducing the KOGL opened. You can find some Q&A boards on the site.
>> 
>> I hope the KOGL Type 1 would be classified as conformant with the Open Definition. Since information related to the KOGL is mainly in Korean, it could be a little bit hard to review, but should there be anything I can help, please let me know.
>> 
>> Thank you for your time.
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> James
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> 

Best wishes,
James