license

Matt Amos contributed a great plain language summary to Open Data Commons for the ODbL. I'm hoping to see similar documents for the PDDL and for the ODC-By when it comes out of draft.

Rather than waiting, I modified the existing document to draft two new plain language summaries. One for the PDDL and another for the ODC-By draft.  read more »

Nanaimo BC is an early adopter in the growing municipal open data movement. Beautiful Nanaimo is the second largest city on Vancouver Island, which should be built on delicious layers of crumb, icing and chocolate but which is instead sedimentary and volcanic rock. Between publishing open data and the bathtub races, there is a lot to love about Nanaimo, BC.  read more »

Every municipality that is releasing open data is doing the right thing, but some are doing a better job of it than others. Municipalities are new to open data, so these teething pains should be no surprise. The wider open data community is obliged to point out where municipalities are falling down but we are also obliged to point out who is opening their data more effectively.  read more »

Edmontorcouver is a lovely place full of lovely, intelligent, generous people. That is not the tragedy of Edmontorcouver open data.

The mayor of Edmontorcouver realized that it would benefit the people of Edmontorcouver to have good data about their city widely available. That is not the tragedy of Edmontorcouver open data.

Edmontorcouver hosted a wonderful gala to announce the generous release of great quantities of data. That is not the tragedy of Edmontorcouver open data.  read more »

There has been some confusion on legal-talk and OKC-talk about when the Share Alike requirement for Derivative Databases becomes mandatory. In my first reading of ODbL draft v0.9 I incorrectly thought that Public Use of a Produced Work created with a Derivative Database triggered Share Alike of that Derived Database.  read more »

Produced Works created from ODbL databases carry a requirement for attribution when Published. That is well and good for many wares and for common wares that we are currently creating with OpenStreetMap. When we print a map we can include the ODbL attribution text in the title block. But what about other wares?

Consider the noble cupcake.  read more »

Update in progress.

The OpenStreetMap project is anticipating a license change. In fact the project has been anticipating this change for a while. Now it seems imminent.

A draft license for the database was released Friday, 27 February 2009 along with a data license. The proposal for consideration is, "Should OpenStreetMap transition from cc-by-sa, to ODbL?" I say "Yes." Why we need to transition away from cc-by-sa has been offered elsewhere. Here is why ODbL is the license to which we should transition.  read more »