[Okfn-ca] [CivicAccess-discuss] The Role of Canadian Municipal Open Data: A Multi-city Evaluation | Currie, Liam (MA Thesis)

Wed Sep 4 15:34:24 UTC 2013

Excellent definition, thank you Diane.

As a brief followup to this great 'open' source debate, I would just add that although pure principles are important, history has taught us that often time they are not pragmatic.  (even Karl Marx wrote about this repeatedly during his lifetime, but some people chose to ignore those bits)

The challenge with open source is that often, it is much more expensive and risky to implement  than a commercial solution. A recent CKAN project I worked on could serve as a bit of a case study for this fact.

If you are familiar with property rights theory, you may immediately agree that exclusion rights of intellectual property is essential to maximize some kinds of innovation and organizational productivity.  18 years in the business, mostly working with OSS, backs this up, but since anecdotal evidence is mostly junk, please pretend I didn't say that ;)

Peder

Sent from my iPad

On 2013-09-04, at 10:56 AM, Diane Mercier <diane.mercier at gmail.com> wrote:

>  
> Dear friends, chers amis,
> 
> Please see the Open Definition (both for Open Data and Open Content) adopted by Open Knowledge foundation Network
> 
> In English : http://opendefinition.org/okd/
> 
> En français : http://opendefinition.org/okd/francais/
> 
> « Quand dire c'est faire » (Austin, 1970)
> « How to do things with Words » (Austin, 1955)
> 
> Cordialement, Regards,
> 
> P.-S. Les envois multiples (crosspostings) sont  souvent nécessaires en curation, car une personne est libre de faire partie de plusieurs réseaux ou média sociaux. À chacun de gérer ces propres abonnements et non aux expéditeurs de limiter leur force de liaison/curation. 
> 
> Suggestions for automatic translation tool :
>    http://www.translate.ua
>    http://igorgladkov.com/extensions/translator.html
>    https://translate.google.com
> 
> 
> --- Liaison par | Curation by ---
> Dre Diane Mercier
> Ambassadrice de l'Open Knowledge Foundation - Groupe local au Canada
> Web : http://ca.okfn.org
> Discussion : http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-ca
> Medias : @okfnca | LinkedIn : dianemercier | JiTsi - Jabber/XMPP: dianemercier at jit.si
> Blogue : http://dianemercier.com
> Portail : http://donnees.ville.montreal.qc.ca
> 
> 
> Le 2013-09-04 10:18, James McKinney a écrit :
>> (Cutting out all the other lists so that we don't cross-post unnecessarily.)
>> 
>> Actually, Immanuel was quoting Peder :) But Stephane did agree with Peder with:
>> 
>>> +1 Although I am a proponent of open source software, OS/FLOSS software cannot be tied to strongly with open data (or open gov). FLOSS software can enabled some benefits linked to open data, for example better collaboration around data management and software development. But it is not and should not be presented as a prerequisite. Many gov agencies are used to work with some software provider and those agencies and their team should not feel under attack when open data arrives.
>> 
>> Anyway, you can clearly have open data without open source. As mentioned, many governments use proprietary platforms like Socrata to manage and distribute open data, and even more governments use in-house proprietary code to do the same. A lot of open data currently published is created by proprietary software (ESRI ArcGIS) and stored in a proprietary format (ESRI Shapefile).
>> 
>> The definition of open data does not set any requirements with respect to the licensing of the *software* used to create, manage and distribute the open data. The definition only sets requirements with respect to the licensing of the *data*.
>> 
>> And you can clearly analyze open data and open source separately. Open source (and free software) have been around a lot longer as established concepts than open data has, and people have had no trouble analyzing open source in isolation for all that time.
>> 
>> Anyway, no one is arguing against open source. People have simply pointed out that there is a distinction between the two concepts.
>> 
>> James
>> 
>> On 2013-09-04, at 8:30 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
>> 
>>> Immanuel;
>>> 
>>> What Stephane is saying, is that in the short term, as cities/Provs/Terr/Feds are transitioning to open data strategies, they need to cobble up what they have on hand to get data out.  Be that open source or not.  Once they get established a little, and do some organizational learning they can move to other platforms which in the best possible world, OS.
>>> 
>>> I would argue that many of the current portals, even currently used open data OS ones, do not scale well when tens of thousands of datasets are in the systems.  The TBS open data portal is an great example.  Searching data with tags is by no means the best way, and common keyword vocabularies need to be used in order to actually find stuff.  This is where the geomatics folks, and the librarians come into play, they have been doing catalogs and portals for a good long time.  The Ottawa Public Library is an example of an excellent interoperable multi institutional catalog system.  Just need to think of data as books!
>>> 
>>> Finally, this list has always been one where we communicate diplomatically.  Your last post was, somewhat not of that nature.  Breathe first.  Absolutism should be tempered with the grey zones of institutional change that we are witnessing in our institutions.  We will have to be patient or we will lose them.
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> t
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 12:54 PM, Immanuel Giulea <giulea.immanuel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> You don't need open source to have open data.   One the most successful open data platforms on the planet is not built with open source software (Socrata).  And most of the worlds best open data is stored in a decidedly non-open data data store which cannot be easily replaced (Oracle), nor should it.
>>>> -1
>>>> 
>>>> This is so wrong, and on so many levels!!
>>>> 
>>>> You cannot have open data without open source.
>>>> Socrata is not the best platform, it is being replaced by CKAN.
>>>> Oracle is being abandonned to the favor of MariaDB and Postgres and other open database solutions.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> As a subject matter, Open Source software is a very different realm than open data, something that people surprisingly get mixed up together and lump into one because they                         share is the word "Open".    It's also something that would be difficult to write about with any depth unless you have actually worked  in software development;  it's perhaps the only way to separate  the hype from reality….and there is a lot of hype to be sure. 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -1 again
>>>> And wrong on so many levels again. Open data and open source are intimately linked and should be analysed together.
>>>> You don't need an degree in software development to analyse the adoption levels of FLOSS across different countries, levels of government and industries.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> No open data without open source!
>>>> 
>>>> Just my 2 cents
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Immanuel
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 4:58 PM, Peder Jakobsen <pjakobsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 2013-09-01, at 7:55 AM, Immanuel Giulea <giulea.immanuel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> I would include the use of Free Libre and Open Source Software because open data without the right tools is not completely open data.
>>>>> 
>>>>> You don't need open source to have open data.   One the most successful open data platforms on the planet is not built with open source software (Socrata).  And most of the worlds best open data is stored in a decidedly non-open data data store which cannot be easily replaced (Oracle), nor should it. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> As a subject matter, Open Source software is a very different realm than open data, something that people surprisingly get mixed up together and lump into one because they share is the word "Open".    It's also something that would be difficult to write about with any depth unless you have actually worked  in software development;  it's perhaps the only way to separate  the hype from reality….and there is a lot of hype to be sure. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I love open data for a thesis, I would just extend it beyond the Canadian border, otherwise the subject matter seems too small.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Peder 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>>>> CivicAccess-discuss at civicaccess.ca
>>>> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Tracey P. Lauriault
>>> http://traceyplauriault.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/moving-to-ireland/
>>> https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
>>> http://datalibre.ca/
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>>> CivicAccess-discuss at civicaccess.ca
>>> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
>> CivicAccess-discuss at civicaccess.ca
>> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-ca/attachments/20130904/3b6c2796/attachment-0001.html>