[odc-discuss] ODC-BY-1.0 not listed in SPDX

Mon Jul 4 03:08:40 UTC 2016

On 06/28/2016 11:20 AM, Hendy Irawan wrote:
> Dear ODC members,

I'm merely a lurker...

> I was about to use ODC-BY-1.0 for our open data collection in
> https://github.com/soluvas/opendata,
> but noticed that ODC-BY-1.0 is not listed in https://spdx.org/licenses/

You can ask SPDX to add ODC-BY-1.0 if you wish.

> For a license released in 2010 and recommended by
> http://opendefinition.org/licenses/, this seems a peculiarity.
> 
> Also, I have never met an open data licensed as ODC-BY so far. CC-BY is
> the most popular, and also sometimes ODbL.
> 
> ODC-BY seems to be very similar to CC-BY. So now I wonder, is CC-BY more
> recommended over ODC-BY?
> Is there a reason why CC-BY is still widely used despite existence of
> ODC-BY?

CC-BY-4.0 released 2013 explicitly addresses sui generis database
restrictions and ODC has been very quiet since 2010 -- last blog post is
http://opendatacommons.org/2010/06/24/open-data-commons-attribution-license-released/

> I have a bit of concern that when I'm using ODC-BY, some people will ask
> "what's that?" Compared to when they see CC-BY it's something they
> already know.

Surely this would happen with some people, though I've no idea of the
proportion. If you think ODC-BY-1.0 would otherwise work better for your
case than CC-BY-4.0 you'll have to weigh whether the benefits outweigh
its relative obscurity.

Mike