[open-government] government data licenses - best practice?

[Rufus Pollock]

2010/9/3 Olav Anders Øvrebø <olav.ovrebo at gmail.com>:
> The Norwegian government is currently working on formulating licenses that
> will be used when agencies publish their data. Here is a blog post (in
> Norwegian) about the considerations so far:
> http://data.norge.no/blogg/2010/08/en-klausulbuffet-av-vilkar/
>
> A question to list members: Do you know of a "best practice" for such
> licenses? Licenses that are in line with the principles of open data (the
> Open Knowledge Definition?).

My suggestion for best practice is:

1. Get clear first what the licence is supposed to encapsulate (e.g.
is it attribution-only, pd-only, attribution-sharealike ...)

2. Either use existing open licences or ensure you are compatible with
existing licences (perhaps by inserting and explicit clause)
  * My stronger recommendation would be don't draft a licence just use
an existing one but often it seems organizations (esp governments)
want to have their own lawyers do it ...

3. Keep the licence simple

As an example, UK gov licence for data.gov.uk is new but its very
simple and strives to ensure compatibility with other licences.

> National legislation of course complicates things. For instance one has to
> take into consideration the law on copyright, see §43:
> http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/KKD/Medier/Acts%20and%20regulations/Aandsverkloven_engelsk_versjon_nov2008.pdf

That's true.

Regards,

Rufus

> All the best,
> olav
>
>
>
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