[okfn-be] open-residtribution needs some viral taint IMHO (was Re: okfn-be Digest, Vol 3, Issue 7)

Thu Dec 8 22:39:22 UTC 2011

Working in the public sector for some time now, I'm growing into having an
ever stronger argument against the "free redistribution"

It goes along the lines that were brought up by the person of CultuurNet on
the AppsForGhent in May: we need the usage-statistics fed back!

Point is that in today's information systems tracking the usage, popularity
and feedback (reviews) from end-users are more and more building up as
relevant meta-data about the information, augmenting on its value.

I seriously think that in opening data, the public sector should make sure
from the start that in case of redistribution there is some mechanism
(license constraint?) for harvesting back this kind of information. I
assume most parties will be willing to do so, not in the least because the
subsequent opening up of this aggregated data should allow them to do some
benchmarking of their own channel.

regards,
-marc=

2011/12/8 Bart Van Loon <bart at zeropoint.it>

> It was Thu Dec 08 at 02:43PM when Patrick Hochstenbach wrote:
> > Is there a good definition of what 'open' means in 'open data'? In the
> > library world we know the 'public domain' which is free of copyright
> > and there is 'open access' where there is still copyright but you have
> > a quite non-restrictive license for re-use.
>
> I'm not familiar with definitions of `open' in this context, but I think
> it's similar to the `free' in `free software'.
>
> Software is free if the license provides you the following four basic
> freedoms:
>    * freedom to study
>    * freedom to use
>    * freedom to modify
>    * freedom to distribute
>
> It doesn't mean it's in the public domain, however. It can perfectly
> well have a clear owner and stringent IP ownership applied to it. It
> doesn't make it less `free' however.
>
> Similarly, open data can perfectly well be owned by someone (as opposed
> to being in the public domain), and still be open. As long as I can
> study, use, modify and distribute the data, it's open to me.
>
> --
> regards,
> Bart Van Loon
>
>    Pakistan Fact #18: Pakistan is the world's nineth largest English
> speaking
> country
>
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