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Rufus Pollock | 2 Jul 19:32
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Re: PSI click to CC-BY-SA compatibility

2009/7/2 Joseph Seddon <joseph.seddon <at> wikimedia.org.uk>:
> A further issues that I though might be a problem is as follows:
>
> It does not otherwise allow you to authorise the reproduction of the
> Material

I assume you mean the sentence in 6.2. I would note that 6.2 begins by
saying the listing there is non-exhaustive ("includes the ...").

I would also emphasizethat this license is definitely *intended* to
permit reuse -- for example national statistics use it and most of the
uses of those statistics is going to be reuse. That said, as I stated,
and as emphasized by Andy section 9.6 could be an issue. The exact
implications of this section are slightly unclear, though I presume
them to be about trying to stop people using material to pretend to
have endorsement from the government. As such they might fall within
the ambit of the "integrity" sections of the CC license section 4a:

<quote>
If You create a Collection, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to
the extent practicable, remove from the Collection any credit as
required by Section 4(c), as requested. If You create an Adaptation,
upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable,
remove from the Adaptation any credit as required by Section 4(c), as
requested.
</quote>

> You must not pass your rights under this Licence to anyone else.

This is the issue I mentioned in my first response that subsequent
(Continue reading)

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Joseph Seddon | 2 Jul 18:44

PSI click to CC-BY-SA compatibility

Heya guys,
 
This is my first post to the list :) Hope we can have some great successes with WMUK and OKFN working together :)
 
I wanted to ask whether UK PSI click use content is compatible and easily convertible to a CC-BY-SA license.
 
One of the directors at Wikimedia UK had a meeting with Richard Stirling from the cabinet office about crown copyright and we are currently lobbying them to ensure that PSI licensed content is useable on wikimedia projects. This particularly revoles around the compatibility with CCBYSA. Not only will this benefit us, but everyone, in and out of the UK.
 
 
Joseph Seddon
Director
Wikimedia UK
 
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Rufus Pollock | 1 Jul 13:10
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Re: Open Data is Civic Capital: Best Practices for "Open Government Data"

2009/6/20 Josh Tauberer <tauberer@...>:
> On 06/08/2009 05:04 AM, Rufus Pollock wrote:
[...]
>> One extra item that is worth thinking about is how these kind of
>> principles will play outside of the US -- attitudes to Government data
>> in, e.g. European countries, is often rather different than in the
>> States (where we have federal data in the Public Domain by default).
>> For example, item 8 from the original 8 principles saying "data is not
>> subject to any copyright, patent, ..." is simply not true in the UK.
>
> True vs not true is the wrong words, right? Definition/requirements are met
> vs not met. In places where there is crown copyright, this definition will
> simply never hold. Too bad for them: they don't have an open government.

I think there was a misunderstanding here: what I meant was that in a
lot of jurisdictions (most of those which are not the USA!) government
content or data does *not* start out "not subject to copyright, patent
..." (whereas in the USA, at least in theory, for federal data/content
it does).

Thus, in many places, to make the data "open" it needs to be
explicitly licensed/dedicated. Now that could be by
licensing/dedicating to the public domain or, as is the case with the
UK PSI click-use license, making the data freely available for use and
reuse but subject to an attribution and (minor) integrity requirement.

At least in this second case, though the data is "open", that does not
mean it is "not subject to any copyright, ..." -- just in the way that
code licensed under the GPL or content under a Creative Commons
attribution license is open but the material is still "subject to
copyright".

> But I think as opposed to in the legal world where we want to say whether a
> software license is met or not met (for instance), in the practical world of
> government policy things need not be binary. It will be rare that we find
> data that meets all of the principles that I've pulled out for open
> government data. And that's fine.

Absolutely: a dataset may comply on some but not all criteria. This is
a little like what we are already doing with the resources listed on
CKAN, for example, see this list of items tagged with "gov":

<http://www.ckan.net/tag/read/gov>

We've used ticks and crosses to indicate how well a package does on
the two basic openness criteria: a) being openly licensed 2) being
available (for download in a simple, bulk form).

Regards,

Rufus
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Mr. Puneet Kishor | 1 Jul 02:25

WisconsinView satellite data, now under CC0

My friend Dr. Sam Batzli, Director, WisconsinView, has made available  
the program's more than 6 Terabytes of satellite imagery under the CC0  
Protocol. Here is a "press release"

Since 2004, WisconsinView (http://www.wisconsinview.org) has made  
aerial photography and satellite imagery of Wisconsin available to the  
public for free over the web. As part of the AmericaView consortium,  
WisconsinView supports access and use of these imagery collections  
through education, workforce development, and research. Starting June  
30, 2009, WisconsinView is making available all of its more than 6  
Terabytes of imagery data under the new CC0 Protocol provided by  
Creative Commons. The CC0 (pronounced CC-Zero) Protocol waives any  
rights in a dataset, ensuring that all of the dataset is available to  
anyone without encumbrance of any kind. More information on CC0 is  
available at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0, and the reasoning  
behind the protocol is described at
http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/ 
. Further questions about WisconsinView may be directed to Dr. Sam  
Batzli, Director, WisconsinView at sabatzli@... or Puneet Kishor,  
Science Commons Fellow (Geospatial Data) at punkish@...

--

-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org
Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org
Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org
Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor
Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Assertions are politics; backing up assertions with evidence is science
=======================================================================
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Rufus Pollock | 29 Jun 13:26
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Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0 Released

Open Data Commons have released v1.0 of the Open Database License
(ODbL) a share-alike license for data and databases. See the full
announce below.

This is big news for anyone working on open data so please
redistribute to all interested individuals and communities.

Regards,

Rufus

  ~~ Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0 Released ~~

<http://www.opendatacommons.org/2009/06/29/open-database-license-odbl-v10-released/>

Open Data Commons are delighted to announce the release of v1.0 of the
Open Database License (ODbL):

  <http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/>

The Open Database License (ODbL) is an open license for data and
databases which gives users freedom to use, reuse and redistribute
subject only to the requirement of attribution and share-alike.

This license, the first of its kind, is a major step forward for open
data. There are currently very few licenses available suited to data
and databases and none which provide for share-alike (existing
share-alike licenses such as the GPL, GFDL and CC By-SA are all
unsuitable for data).

The development of the ODbL, has been a major effort extending over
more than one and half years with an intensive consultation and review
period for the last 6 months. We'd like to express our thanks to the
communities and individuals who have contributed during this time.
Have fun using it!

### About Open Data Commons

Open Data Commons, http://www.opendatacommons.org/, exists to provide
legal solutions for open data. In March 2008 it launched the first
ever open data license: the Public Domain Dedication and License. Open
Data Commons is an Open Knowledge Foundation project run by its
advisory council and like the Foundation is a not-for-profit effort
working for the benefit of the general open knowledge community.
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IAN ELSOM | 26 Jun 14:37

Local History Portal

Hi

 

I’m new to the list. Jonathan asked me to write a short post about Local History portal sites and what I require from them. I have looked at just four. There may be more.

 

http://www.britishlocalhistory.co.uk/tabid/8906/default.aspx

 

http://www.americanlocalhistory.com/home.html

 

http://www.local-history.co.uk

 

http://www.history4u.info/

 

The first two make me angry because they don’t have a local history heart. The third is terrific. Its aim is “to help meet the needs of anyone with an interest in local history” and it does this admirably. The fourth is a curiosity. It gives the impression of knowing where everything is. It will, amongst other services, supply information to specific enquiries or direct you to sources relevant to your enquiry. But I don’t want to “do” my local history this way.

 

I range widely in time and space (in my home office) and whenever I fetch up somewhere new I would like to be able to find out quickly if it has already been studied, written about, mapped and/or photographed. And has anyone compiled data from primary sources already and made it freely available so that I don’t have to spend hours doing it myself! If the ground has already been covered I want to be able to assess how well it has been done. If I feel capable of adding something new I will do; otherwise I’ll learn something while engaging with the existing work and then move on.

 

Local history seems to be as good a subject area as any upon which to trial ways of creating lists, catalogues, indexes and repositories for books, articles, theses, images etc. I expect it would take a long time to grow such resources so in the meanwhile I would like to put out messages – I am researching This Place or Person for This Reason, can anyone help? In return I would look out to help others and, of course, make the final elements of my researches – texts, maps, photographs and datasets – open to anyone to use. The other day I downloaded a PDF of a PhD Thesis. No fuss, no bother. Great. But I happened upon it by chance. An appropriately designed and built Local History Portal (complementary to Local History Online and not duplicating their effort) may allow me to do this time and again by design.

 

Local History can be woven in much the same way as National but the resulting fabric is very different! That is something the first two portals above simply don’t understand.

 

I look forward to your comments.

 

Ian Elsom

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Jonathan Gray | 24 Jun 15:51
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Fwd: Putting Government Data online (by TimBL)

This is interesting!

  http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/GovData

Jonathan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jose M. Alonso <josema@...>
Date: Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:00 PM
Subject: Putting Government Data online (by TimBL)
To: eGov IG <public-egov-ig@...>

All,

Tim Berners-Lee just made public a new document in his "Design Issues"
series called "Putting Government Data online"

 http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/GovData

This is _very_ related to our Open Government Data discussions and
you'll find there some similarities to the draft data.gov.* memo we've
been discussing recently.

Best,
Jose.

--
Jose M. Alonso <josema@...>    W3C/CTIC
eGovernment Lead                  http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/

--

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org
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Jonathan Gray | 23 Jun 18:50
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Re: CKAN spam

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Alan
Jenkins<alan-jenkins@...> wrote:
> I think most sites have multiple download files.
>
> My impression is that the links on CKAN are for human consumption.
> Usually when visiting the main URL for a site, it's not immediately
> obvious where to find the page with download information.
>
> If I wanted to download a large dataset, I would want to visit the
> download page on the appropriate site first.  It would be a nice way to
> check that the CKAN info (e.g. license) was sane and up-to-date, that
> the site was still live, what size file it was, etc.
>
> My opinion is that direct download URLs are only appropriate in a few
> limited settings, e.g. in a "pull request" email for a GIT repository,
> or in a how-to document.  I don't think CKAN is one of these case, but
> of course you are free to decide otherwise :-).

This is true. One of our long term goals with CKAN is to develop
something like an 'apt-get' for open knowledge - in which case the
direct download links would be useful. We're also hoping that where
there are multiple links, we can introduce support for multiple
download URLs, or scripts to grab or scrape the relevant files. I
think we'd also like to mirror versions of open datasets and to
encourage people to link to 'cleaned up', linked or other versions of
the data...

[snip]

> The tags bother me a little bit.  It can be difficult to discover the
> "right" one - currently there are more tags than packages!  Some of them
> are non-obvious, e.g. the specific meaning of "open-access".  Some of
> them I have no idea, e.g. what "bri" means :-).

Yes - I've been wondering whether it might be good to have more of the
sense of the tags being 'curated'. (As well as the collections of
packages associated with them..) In any case perhaps we should look
into how we can make the tags more documented/visible on the site.

> An improvement might be to make tag creation slightly more heavy-weight,
> and encourage you to enter a short description.  That would also make it
> easier for e.g. an admin to decide when different tags have been created
> for the same concept, and that they should be merged.

Thats a nice idea!

--

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org
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Jonathan Gray | 23 Jun 14:06
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Re: CKAN spam

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Alan
Jenkins<alan-jenkins@...> wrote:
> I've added a couple of my favourite niche knowledge packages: the
> collections of internet RFCs and the International Speculative Fiction
> Database.  I have a question about CKAN  Download URLs though.

Great! Just had a look at these:

  http://ckan.net/package/read/isfdb
  http://ckan.net/package/read/rfcs

Thanks also for fixing the package with the 'access-web' tag. Glad to
see you've got the hang of the access and format tags straight away!

> For the packages I added, I didn't give the direct download URL - I gave the
> URL of the page which _described_ the download URL(s).  Otherwise a) you may
> miss out on options like different formats, older versions, or downloading
> the site code alongside the data; b) if the format is a bit obscure like an
> SQL dump, then you may not know what to do with it once you've downloaded
> it!

My own feeling is that if there is a single URL for the file (as with
CKAN) then this should go in the download URL field. If there are
multiple URLs for different files perhaps, I think you're right that
its better to make sure all options are included and to link to page
which lists URLs! I guess its also an option to document these options
in the notes section...

Having entered a few packages it would be great to hear your thoughts
about CKAN and whether you can think of any improvements or new
features you'd like to see!

--

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org
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Rufus Pollock | 23 Jun 13:26
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Open Shakespeare improvements

This summer there's a plan to work on open shakespeare in association
with some student volunteers from University of Cambridge. Discussion
and planning is going on here (participation welcome!):

<http://wiki.okfn.org/p/Open_Shakespeare>

Things we plan to look:

  * Adding critical notes and word glosses to a text (Hamlet)
  * Introductions and summaries for plays
  * Word of the day feature
  * (Technical) Improved and integrated annotation (browser technology
has moved on since our original attempt 2+ years ago)

The front-page has also seen a bit of a touch-up recently (less text,
nicer buttons, a picture of shakespeare himself!):

<http://www.openshakespeare.org/>

Regards,

Rufus
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Jonathan Gray | 23 Jun 03:21
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Around on IRC (2009-06-23)

Rufus and I will both be around on IRC tomorrow afternoon - just in
case anyone would like to drop in to discuss anything!

--

-- 
Jonathan Gray

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