[open-government] [od-discuss] New 'open' NC license from UK Government?

Tue Aug 2 09:03:09 UTC 2011

As far as I can see the National Archives are not claiming their NC licence
is 'open' - see:

[1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/604.htm

[2]
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/uk-gov-licensing-f
ramework.htm

[3]
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/non-commercial-government-licence/ 

as well as the direct quotes in the Guardian article.

However they do seem to see it as complementary to the OGL in the programme
of opening up UK public sector data.

Comment: the NC licence is a risk - it is certainly helpful for datasets
which *cannot* currently be released for commercial reuse; conversely
there's a risk that public bodies will seize upon the NC licence for data
they could release equally well under the OGL.  The TNA try to mitigate this
risk through saying that "the Open Government Licence as the default licence
for public sector information that is available for use and re-use free of
charge" [2], but this is only a *directive* for central government
departments and agencies.

-----Original Message-----
From: od-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:od-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gray
Sent: 02 August 2011 09:38
To: od-discuss at lists.okfn.org; open-government at lists.okfn.org
Subject: [od-discuss] New 'open' NC license from UK Government?

Does anyone know whether the UK Government are calling the new NC license an
'open' license? It certainly isn't open as per OpenDefinition.org [1].

"Developed a non-commercial, 'open' licence for information to be re-used
free of charge provided it's not for commercial use."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/government-computing-network/2011/aug/01/data-mana
gement-central-government

This is a good case of where having a well defined set of international
principles on open government data could be valuable [2]. Not necessarily so
that the government doesn't develop an NC license - but mainly so that they
don't call this an 'open' license!

J.

[1] http://www.opendefinition.org/
[2]
http://blog.okfn.org/2011/07/08/we-need-international-open-government-data-p
rinciples/

--
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg

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