[OpenSpending] Newsletter - 1:2015

[Ásta Helgadóttir]

January started off slowly but with some happy little changes!

The OpenSpending.org server was moved in early January, fixing the
problem we were running into with the search engine which was running
out of memory. But now that has been fixed so (hopefully) we'll not have
any more problems regarding that.

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There is a question about whether to discontinue the community meetings
for OpenSpending or change the format. The current form doesn't seem to
be attracting people anymore, so it would be interesting to see if
people would be more interested to get someone who's not in the
community but is still doing OpenSpending related work to come and do a
Google-hangout presentation about the work they are doing and then Q&A
afterwards.

The OpenData dev meetings will be on their place, every first Thursday
in the month. Next dev meeting will thus be on February the 5th and I
guess that Tryggvi will continue the same format. Last dev meeting was
about the architecture and some fruitful discussions were held.

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The Open Data day will universally celebrated by some data-hacking on
the 21nd of February. If you haven't organized anything, then now is the
time, only three weeks to go. I noticed that Rufus has secured a venue
in London, http://attending.io/events/open-data-day-london-2015 and it
would be great to hear from other people if they are in the process of
organizing something. There will also be an OpenData camp UK held that
weekend in Winchester for those who are interested
http://odcamp.org.uk/. I will be in Copenhagen that day, so who will be
there?

OpenSpending has now a Facebook group as an alternative platform to
discuss OpenSpending. It would be quite if anyone wants to say something
interesting there. If you're organizing an OpenData day in February,
please post about it there so people who are curious about what
OpenSpending, OpenData etc., means know about it and can perhaps,
hopefully, show up and join :) The link is here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/423684441114559/

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There will be much going on in February, but this week, 5th of February,
there is an Open Data Maker even in london, at Digital Catapult Centra,
101 Euston Road from 18:30-21:00. If you want to join, sign up here:
http://attending.io/events/open-data-maker-london-feb-2015

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In a bit more unrelated but still related news:

There is a European Copyright Reform going through the European
Parliament and some of it is related to database right. Julia Reda,
Pirate MEP, has proposed some changes in the InfoSoc directive, directly
related to databases trying to secure the right to do text and data
mining. Not only that, but Reda has also proposed that all governmental
documents made in the European Union memberstates should be exempted
from copyright protection.

If this goes through it would clarify the legal status of data scraping,
especially of public documents as member states would be required to
publish their data without copyright. For anyone interested, here is the
link:
https://juliareda.eu/2015/01/report-eu-copyright-rules-maladapted-to-the-web/
and the relevant paragraphs are Article 5 and 18.

Have a nice February!

Ásta