[od-discuss] Fwd: Conformance - Open Government License - Surrey 1.0

Mike Linksvayer ml at gondwanaland.com
Fri Mar 6 23:18:31 UTC 2015


I would like Surrey to clarify what they think the license means. If
they, the only possible licensor, completely misunderstand the license,
it seems the license is effectively as bad as a reusable license which
is written so confusingly that all possible licensors completely
misunderstand it. We wouldn't ever approve such a license.

Separately, assuming we have a miscommunication or misunderstanding soon
easily corrected, how do we represent the approved license on
http://opendefinition.org/licenses/ ?

I propose in the comments on OGL Canada we add...

Note several Canadian provinces and municipalities have developed
non-reusable licenses, each with differences from the federal OGL
Canada. Some of these are open, as noted on a [dedicated
page](/licenses/ogl-canada-subnational).

...and list Surrey and potentially others to the dedicated page.

Mike

On 03/05/2015 09:12 PM, Herb Lainchbury wrote:
> I would like to hear from others on this before we take another vote on
> the Surrey license.  I think we have to take a license as it is written.
> 
> In my opinion, the extra condition that Paul mentions, that he must
> publish derivatives using the same license, is not something that the
> license itself says.
> 
> Further, the fact that it makes re-use impractical ( a developer is
> unlikely to to re-publish using the City License ) says to me that this
> is not the actual intention, and I certainly would not interpret it that
> way. 
> 
> Based on the City of Surrey license v2.0 alone, I would feel free to use
> the data from the City of Surrey and re-publish using another open
> licence.  I would look at Kent's tool
> ( http://www.clipol.org/licences/CAN-GoC-ODL-2.0 ) and see that the
> Canada license, which is almost identical to the Surrey license shows a
> number of licenses that are compatible.
> 
> I would acknowledge that the city is one of my sources of data and would
> attribute them in the manner they specified.
> 
> Herb
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Herb Lainchbury
> <herb at dynamic-solutions.com <mailto:herb at dynamic-solutions.com>> wrote:
> 
>     2.1.3 reads: "The license must allow the creation of derivatives of
>     the licensed work and allow the distribution of such derivatives
>     under the same terms of the original licensed work."
> 
>     I read that to mean, "the same terms" not "the same license".  So if
>     I distribute my work under a license that I create called
>     MyGreatLicense that has the same terms, then I am not in violation. 
>     Those terms would include things like giving the City credit
>     (attribution) and giving downstream users the same rights I was
>     given.  Maybe that's not practically possible either, but that's how
>     I would interpret it to start out with.
> 
>     If there was a term in the license that said I had to use the same
>     license, then we would have a true share-alike license as I
>     understand it, and I too would consider it unusable since I'm not
>     the City.
> 
>     The fact that the city told you that you would have to license under
>     the OGL - Surrey is indeed problematic.  I think that has to be an
>     error.  If that is what they intended I would expect to see that the
>     terms of the license itself.
> 
>     Are you able to ask for clarification?
> 
>     H
> 
> 
> 
>     On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 1:45 PM, Aaron Wolf <wolftune at riseup.net
>     <mailto:wolftune at riseup.net>> wrote:
> 
>         Good catch. Assuming you are right that they have a share-alike
>         combined
>         with a discrimination on who can use the *license* (which is
>         different
>         from discriminating about who can use the data), it does seem to
>         be a
>         problem still. Given their response earlier, I suspect we can
>         have them
>         rectify this.
> 
>         On 03/02/2015 12:28 PM, Paul Norman wrote:
>         > On 2/26/2015 6:47 PM, Herb Lainchbury wrote:
>         >> I have placed a copy of the revised Open Government License -
>         Surrey
>         >> (City of Surrey, BC, Canada) into our /licenses/inreview
>         repository.
>         >>
>         >> As noted in this thread they have adopted our recommendation
>         and one
>         >> of our two suggestions.
>         >>
>         >> I intend to call for a vote on this new version (2.0) in in a
>         few days.
>         > Looking over my correspondence with Surrey, I believe the
>         license still
>         > has a flaw which prevents conformance with 2.1.3.
>         >
>         > There is general agreement that only information* by the City
>         of Surrey
>         > can be licensed under the OGL - Surrey.
>         >
>         > I was considering the case where I create a new work of
>         information
>         > which is a mix of Surrey information and information I have
>         created. The
>         > city told me that this would need to be licensed under the OGL
>         - Surrey.
>         > The only problem is that not being the City of Surrey, I can't
>         release
>         > information under their license.
>         >
>         > This has in effect created a situation where you have a
>         share-alike
>         > license which only one party can use.
>         >
>         > 2.1.3 requires that work allow the distribution of derivatives
>         under the
>         > same terms, which you can't do here. It also does not allow
>         derivatives
>         > under different terms.
>         >
>         > * information as defined in the license
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