[okfn-hu] Planning for open data workshop in Budapest, 20th May

Tue May 3 15:14:12 UTC 2011

Jonathan,

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 01:57, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:

> "I am pretty much against listing "open data" with "unknown license".
[...]

> A little while back we hacked together a basic web service to help
> people make (and log) enquiries about whether or not a given dataset
> is open as in opendefintion.org. We also list this kind of information
> on CKAN.net (which powers data.gov.uk and over 30+ data catalogues
> around the world).

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. I have checked 5 random listed
data sources where the data have already been scraped or copied. NONE
of them provided any information about the legal status of the data,
or the license. That's 100%. Last time I have checked the entries
about Hungary, and the result was the same: none of the entries
contained any information about license or legal status. Obviously I
could go on checking the entries until I find at least one which is
actually free, but you see my point I reckon.

This list is, as it is, useless for me. Most of them not even telling
the proper source so I cannot even verify myself the legal status, not
that it would be possible for a foreign countries' gov't data...

> As you've been involved in Open Street Map in Hungary - I wonder if
> you know of cases where Hungarian public bodies have co-operated with
> OSM to openly license public geospatial datasets?

Yes, definitely. And companies. I can tell you examples but I only
remember a few specific one, like the Romanian company Norc ( norc.hu
/ norc.ro / norc.cz ....) which offered all their GPS tracks (very
detailed street-level city surveys) for OSM. There are public
geospatial data offered, like a few cities' local government actually
specified free copyright on digital map data. There are public data
available, too, which was imported into OSM (some raiway maps and I
believe some water maps). And there are EU-level geospatial data
providers who offer their data under free licenses. And an obvious
honorable mention is Yahoo! Maps and microsoft Bing who allow manual
tracking of their satellite data.

-- 
 byte-byte,
    grin