[odc-discuss] Open Database Licence

Wed Mar 4 19:48:46 UTC 2009

Some people definitely think it's unworkable, for legal reasons as well
as practical ones. The practical ones are a value judgement that can be
debated, it's a legitimate opinion that the gain is worth the effort.
But the legal reasons... if it's not predictably legally enforceable,
then even if your value judgement is you want a SA license, you might be
in trouble.

Here's the best distillation I've found of both the legal and
practical-value concerns:

http://sciencecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/freedom-to-research.pdf

Do again note that there are two themes there; the practical use value
argument is debatable based on standpoint. The legal argument is more
about what is, regardless of what you'd like.

But yeah, if you guys think a SA style license for (possibly factual)
data really is predictably legally enforceable the way you've written
it, then that's a useful service, and I understand why both a SA and and
an "all rights released" style license should be made available. I'll
have to look more at that license to see how you've managed to constrain
the legal uncertainties. But it makes sense to me that there's no need
for two "all rights released" style licenses, and I'm more comfortable
with the predictable legal enforceability of the PDDL.

Jonathan

Rufus Pollock wrote:
> 2009/3/4 Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind at jhu.edu>:
>   
>> This is interesting and odd to me, because my understanding was that
>> providing a share-alike license was pretty much unworkable for data -- not
>> feasible to make a legally enforceable contract to these ends accross
>> jurisdictions. Which is what led to the PDDL/CC0/Science Data Commons
>> approach.
>>     
>
> I don't think anyone ever thought this was 'unworkable' for data: the
> original license Jordan wrote (out of which came the PDDL) was an SA
> type license.
>
> There is a debate as to whether SA is a good idea (John Wilbanks of SC
> is particularly critical) and in some jurisdictions is debatable
> exactly whether (and what) 'DB rights' exist on which to base a SA
> license. I wrote a blog post on this recently that goes over much of
> this:
>
> <http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/02/open-data-openness-and-licensing/>
>
> This has a bunch of links to more info at the bottom. If you are
> interested in the question of 'data rights' I'd point to our guide on
> this matter:
>
> http://www.okfn.org/wiki/OpenDataLicensing
>
> There's also an appendix specifically commenting on Science Common's
> "Protocol on Implementing Open Access to Data":
>
> <http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/09/comments-on-the-science-commons-protocol-for-implementing-open-access-data/>
>
>   
>> But apparently it is legally feasible in some cases?  Any background
>> material I should read explaining how ODbL manages to work at all?
>>     
>
> See previous.
>
>   
>> I'm also not certain what the effective difference between the Factual
>> Information License and the PDDL is. "MIT style" generally means that that
>> the user is free to do pretty much whatever they want with it. So the user
>> might have the same rights with the PDDL or the FIL, but the FIL doesn't
>> actually put anything into the public domain?  I'll have to read the FIL
>> carefully; again, my understanding was that it was legally very
>> complicated/infeasible to do this with factual information _without_ just
>> putting it in the public domain.
>>     
>
> I agree here. I think the FIL and the ODbL were the original licenses
> drafted by Jordan and formed a complementary package. With the
> development of the PDDL I think the FIL is perhaps no longer needed
> and can be deprecated in favour of the PDDL. However, Jordan would
> need to comment on this.
>
> Rufus
>   