[odc-discuss] Not sure what license to use for user-contributed data.

Fri Nov 7 10:54:00 UTC 2014

Cillian,

Excellent idea for a project.

In the EU (I'm guessing you are in Dublin) there is unlikely to be any
intellectual property protection for the individual logs which appear, from
my brief try-out, to be restricted to recording purely factual data. There
would be protection for the investment in creating the database as a whole
under the database right. There's very little case law on the database
right, but my guess is that you (or whoever hosts the application) would be
entitled to such a right.

That means you could, in principle, impose a share-alike restriction within
the EU at least by using an appropriate share-alike licence. The ODbL would
be the obvious example.

Note: CC version 4 now includes reference to the database right. There are
technical differences between CC-BY-SA and ODbL which are subtle, but in
general terms (i) ODbL is more aggressively share-alike for databases,
which is probably what you want; (ii) ODbL attempts to affect use outside
the EU via a contractual model as well as an IP model - as yet untested.

I would therefore investigate ODbL.

DbCL is designed to work with a database like yours - it requires users of
the data (if there is any protection in the data) to respect the ODbL,
which is probably all you need.

If you are keen that the data is not re-enclosed CC0 will not assist you.

I hope that helps.

Francis

2014-11-06 22:52 GMT+00:00 Cillian <contact at openeconomylog.org>:

> Hi,
> I'm looking for help with deciding which license to use for
> *user-contributed data* on an application I'm developing.
>
> Basically the application lets you log the things you use and where they
> come from. The purpose of which is to build up a list of locally produced
> goods and services. [1]
>
> Ideally I'd like a license for the data that satisfies the following:
>
> * Ensure the data stays open i.e. it can't be copied then enclosed.
> * Use of the data requires attribution (As long as having to attribute
> isn't going to cause lots of hassle for people).
> * The license is interoperable with other open licenses.
>
> I was looking at the Database Contents License (DbCL) but I am worried
> that the attribution requirements may cause hassle for people to want to
> re-use the data. If that is the case, should I consider using CC0?
>
> I don't have much experience with data licenses so could anyone help out
> with some advice please?
>
> Thanks,
> Cillian
>
> Ps. I was also thinking of licensing the database *structure* too. Would
> the Open Database License (ODbL) be appropriate?
>
> [1] https://gitlab.com/open-economy-log/open-economy-log#readme
>
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-- 
Francis Davey
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