[okfn-discuss] Open knowledge licensing and Talis community licence

Thu Jun 29 19:44:03 UTC 2006

Dear Mr Miller,

I came across your page on a licence for (library) data:

   http://www.talis.com/tdn/tcl
   http://www.talis.com/tdn/node/1375

The issue you raise is an important one (and you are exactly correct in 
your response to the suggestion to use the GFDL -- which you probably 
shouldn't use even for copyright works but that is another story). In 
this regard I thought you would be interested in the open knowledge 
definition which we, at the Open Knowledge Foundation, have been working on:

   http://www.okfn.org/okd/

Rather than being a licence this is simply a set of minimal requirements 
for a licence to be 'open' (that is for the knowledge licensed to be 
'open' -- knowledge here being taken to mean data/content/information 
etc). There is also a wiki page in which we are accumulating references 
to existing 'open' licences and you might want to add a reference to 
your licence:

   http://www.okfn.org/wiki/OpenKnowledgeDefinition

Finally I should point out that the Netherlands Creative Commons licence 
explicitly covers the database right (I believe it is the only European 
CC licence to do so).

Regards,

Rufus Pollock