[okfn-discuss] a lay person's guide to licensing geographic data

Fri May 8 22:38:59 UTC 2009

Hi Jo,

I have no idea how I let this one slide. My apologies for the tardiness.

On Apr 27, 2009, at 9:45 AM, Jo Walsh wrote:

> dear puneet,
>
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org 
> > wrote:
>> 2009/4/4 Mr. Puneet Kishor <punkish at eidesis.org>:
>>> http://www.punkish.org/Licensing-Geographic-Data
>
>> <http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/>
>>
>> You should also link your piece from the Open Data Licensing we've
>> been developing for the last couple of years guide somewhere:
>>
>>  <http://wiki.okfn.org/OpenDataLicensing>
>
> A couple of years ago I started a geodata licensing guide page
> on the OSGeo wiki, inspired by Jonny's work on the above guide.
>
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Guide_to_Public_Geodata_Licensing
>
> It was intended for public agency use primarily, set out in a
> bullet-pointy, pro-and-con sort of way.
> As you can see it's still sketchy, it would be good to incorporate
> some of your context. I'm not really pursuing it at the moment,
> and the climate has changed somewhat (with PDDL, cc0)
> since it was begun. I wonder if the approach makes sense to you.

Yes, it does make sense to me, especially if the above guide is  
intended to become the canonical guide to such public geodata  
licensing. There is a lot of noise and confusion, and sometimes (and,  
believe me, this is one of those times) people are looking for  
reliable guidance. Any attempt to clear the smoke is a worthy attempt.

PDDL, CC0, all have their place, but I believe the above could draw  
upon on these, and do so from the perspective of geospatial data.  
Would be nice if it ends up developing into a comprehensive database  
of licensing regimes in different countries/jurisdictions, with a  
small number of clear suggestions on what geospatial practitioners  
could pursue, and why.

Let me know if I can help in this endeavor.

Puneet.

>
> cheers,
>
>
> jo
>

-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org/
Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org/
Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org/
Science Commons Fellow, Geospatial Data http://sciencecommons.org
Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
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