[open-government] Share-alike

Wed Sep 21 09:17:58 UTC 2011

Here's why I think the Share-Alike licence for core data published by public
bodies is a bad idea. This opinion has refined over time (I originally had a
learning towards SA), based on personal experience working with masses of
public data under a variety of licences, and also trying to build
pro-community businesses based on that.

When you charge for the data, you are by definition restricting access to
those who can afford to pay. Not only does this shut out the wider
community, it also encourages monopolies and defends incumbents, whose by
definition have a business model based on the charging regime. We've seen
this happen in multiple areas, from postcodes to political data, and seen to
that because these groups are seen as the key stakeholders any changes must
be passed by them, in the process stifling innovation, atrophying business
models, and disabling reuse of the data in non-core areas.

It also acts to obscure the original purpose of collecting the data, which
was usually either for scrutiny purposes, or for the more efficient running
of society/the state.

Share-Alike is in practice a tweak on this model, as it's almost always
means Share-Alike for the community, non-Share-Alike for those who pay. I
think this is potentially a good model for the wider community to adopt (in
fact that's the model behind both OpenlyLocal and OpenCorporates -- it's
also the licence adopted by OSM), as it encourages an ecosystem of
like-minded organisations/people/companies, and provides a way of making
them sustainable. However, I think it's a bad idea for core data produced by
government, for both the reasons outlined previously and because it prevents
such a community from forming.

The analogy with open-source software is that programming languages and
other core tools are generally MIT or similar, while the code written with
those languages are frequently GPL. We would have far less innovation, and a
far poorer ecosystem, if the languages were GPL.

Chris

-- 
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http://opencorporates.com
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http://openlylocal.com
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On 17 September 2011 09:20, stef <stefan.marsiske at gmail.com> wrote:

> the SA clause is good.
>
> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 09:44:37AM +1000, Brendan Morley wrote:
> > It seems like your city wants to discriminate against the innovator
> > / entrepreneurial class.
>
> i beg to disagree you can in fact be an innovator and honor the SA.
>
> > Share-Alike has the effect of the author still trying to reserve its
> > rights against commercialisation of its data.
>
> nope, it only keeps the data free and prohibits the privatization of the
> commons. which i'd say that's not innovation but robbery.
>
> > (After all, the
> > author itself doesn't *have* to SA, only the downstream users!)
>
> so the one creating value should not have privileges?
>
> > Whereas non Share-Alike puts everyone on the same playing field for
> > downstream value adding.
>
> being on the same playing field is good, no?
>
> > I'd be interested to know why SA was considered by the city in the
> > first place.  It seems like cargo cult thinking.
>
> pls refrain from insulting people creating values for the commons.
>
> > depends on liberally licensed works as contributions (i.e. CC By and
> > public domain), but in turn it also allows full geodata
> > roundtripping between government-crowd-commercial.
>
> how can you ensure roundripping back from commercial to crowd and gov
> without
> an SA licence? or do you mean with roundtripping gov-crowd-corporatelockin?
>
> > Other references: http://www.ausgoal.gov.au/the-ausgoal-licence-suite -
> > "Among those, the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) [...]
> > provides the greatest opportunities for re-use of information"
>
> i'd like to see the study that is the foundation for this statement.
>
> --
> gpg: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/stef.gpg
> gpg fp: F617 AC77 6E86 5830 08B8  BB96 E7A4 C6CF A84A 7140
>
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