[od-discuss] Submitting a License to be Reviewed

Tue Sep 1 08:51:33 UTC 2015

Hello Mike,

Please see the below:

> On Aug 27, 2015, at 7:48 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> wrote:
> 
> On 08/17/2015 04:49 AM, James G. Kim wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Ok. Identifying the actual license is pretty important for this group's
> consideration. :) I suppose we should update the process documentation
> to clarify this, done at
> https://github.com/okfn/opendefinition/commit/965da4dcf234afbe605f8bb23eade873fbc33746#diff-43830aa34d8cd786ca56f03e2080c232

The updated process seems good to me. It’s clear and helpful for others submitting licenses.

> But the reason I had difficulty is not the contents of the license URL,
> but lack of links to it. It seems there's a catalog of licensed works at
> http://www.kogl.or.kr/open/koglLicenseSearchNew.do?detailChkValue=off&checkDetailedSearch=off&rgtType=1
> but no links to the licenses and take one of the records
> http://www.culture.go.kr/tradition/usePatternView.do?seq=1001810&type=B&type2=%ED%85%9C%ED%94%8C%EB%A6%BF
> I see a license button but no link to the license. Is the user supposed
> to search the web to find out what the license button means or call the
> phone number on the page?

I think it’s a problem of how to deploy works with the license, not about whether or not the license is open.
However, I will tell this matter to the license’s steward so that people can easily click the button and find out the actual license.

> I actually don't remember how I found the link to the license and cannot
> replicate finding it! (I had located it several months ago
> https://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001435.html while
> looking for various OGLs.) Admittedly I'm probably missing something
> here that would be apparent to someone who can read untranslated Korean. :)

Yes, it’s not easy to locate the actual license on the site when someone cannot understand Korean.
Though it’s a little bit buried, but there is a button on the page describing the license that goes to the actual license page (The button translated into “General Certificate of” on: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kogl.or.kr%2Fopen%2Finfo%2Flicense.do).

>>>> 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.
> 
> I see, thanks. Offtopic, but I hope the Korean government has some
> policy to favor procuring open source software to minimize this issue. :)

They promote use of open-source software in various ways (e.g., through the Open Source S/W Portal: www.oss.kr, in Korean), but there are still some cases where copyrighted works need to be used in the government.

>>>> 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.
> 
> Is the encouragement of an open license entirely implicit? I don't see
> anything in the Act directly addressing copyright, licensing, freedoms,
> openness, etc, ie use of information rather than whether it is
> disclosed. Again, just curious.

Unfortunately, the encouragement of an open license is not explicit in the law, but I guess why the government has developed KOGL is one form of encouragement.

>>>> 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.
> 
> I understand the intention, but it puts a big burden on the user to
> figure out whether information that seems to be licensed is actually
> licensed, because if it happens to be under any of the exclusions, the
> license doesn't apply. This seems rather discouraging as the publisher
> (government) not the potential user is likely to have the expertise to
> make such a determination.
> 
> In terms of http://opendefinition.org/od/ there's a point at which
> exclusions make it unclear whether the license actually does "permit (or
> allow) the following" (2.1) and conversely whether any particular work
> is actually available under an open license (1.1).
> 
> Again, I'm just flagging this as an issue for discussion, I am not sure
> how problematic the KOGL Type 1 implementation is.

I think even if the license does not explicitly mention those restrictions, in the jurisdiction of the South Korea, there are always chances that the license doesn’t apply to the work that includes information that cannot be shared, such as personal data. Since the KOGL Type 1 is non-reusable, in my opinion, those explicit restrictions encourage publishers (government) to ensure that opening the data do not violate any laws of the Republic of Korea.

> Mike
>>>> 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
> 

Regards,
James