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Rufus Pollock | 2 Feb 14:12
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Open Data Openness and Licensing

I've been meaning to put something down on 'open data' for some time.
The motivation for actually doing something now were recent
discussions with John Wilbanks and then the post of Michael Nielsen
and related thread on okfn-discuss. [nielsen-thread].

[nielsen-thread]:http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/2009-January/001206.html

I'd really appreciate any comments people have. For those who prefer
reading websites rather than lists I've also posted the text up at:

<http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/02/open-data-openness-and-licensing/>

Lastly there are two appendices for this essay which I've left out in
the interests of length. One is on 'Facts and Databases' the other is
'Comments on the Science Commons Protocol'. I'd be happy to send them
along if anyone wants to them.

Regards,

Rufus

# Open Data Openness and Licensing #

## Why does this matter?

Why bother about openness and licensing for data? After all they don't
matter in themselves: what we really care about are things like the
progress of human knowledge or the freedom to understand and share.

However, open data is crucial to progress on these more fundamental
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Jonathan Gray | 4 Feb 13:40

OKCon 2009

Hi all,

Details of OKCon are now finalised:

  http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/04/open-knowledge-conference-okcon-2009-london-28th-march-2009/

The announce (copied below) is ready to be forwarded to colleagues and
to relevant lists:

  http://okfn.org/wiki/okcon/2009

There' s a list of mailing lists at the bottom of the wiki page. If
you forward this on, please make a note of which lists you've sent it
to, so we can avoid duplication!

Warm regards,

Jonathan

---

Subject: Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009: London, 28th March 2009

    ~~ Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009 ~~

* where: London School of Economics, London, UK
* when: 28th March 2008, 1030-1830
* home: <http://www.okfn.org/okcon/>
* programme: <http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme>
* register: <http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/>
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Mr. Puneet Kishor | 4 Feb 14:02

CC Zero

Greetings all,

Per Thinh's announcement below, I too am very happy to pass on to you  
information about the availability of CC0 for use and adoption. After  
more than a year of gestation, it is ready to rumble, I hope.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Thinh Nguyen <thinh@...>
> Date: February 3, 2009 12:49:58 PM EST
> ..
> Subject: CC0  Private Announcement
>
> Dear Friends of Science Commons:
>
> I'm delighted to let you know that CC0
> (http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0) has been completed and is  
> ready for
> implementation. We are making this private announcement at this time  
> only to
> our collaborators and potential early adopters, to give them time to
> evaluate the tool and to implement it.
>
> As you know, the concept for CC0 arose from our meeting in October  
> 2007 at
> the Sorbonne in Paris. As a participant in that conference, your  
> ideas and
> suggestions played a key and vital role in shaping our thinking  
> about how to
> share data and databases, which ultimately lead to the development
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Jonathan Gray | 4 Feb 15:18

Re: OKCon 2009

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Mr. Puneet Kishor <punkish@...> wrote:
>> * when: 28th March 2008, 1030-1830
> you are a year off.

Thanks for letting us know Puneet! We've updated this on the blog and
everywhere else. A nice plain text version of the announce (wrapped at
72 characters!) is at:

  http://okfn.org/wiki/okcon/2009#Announce

J.
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Rufus Pollock | 4 Feb 17:55
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IRC meeting tonight (2009-02-04): from 1830 GMT on irc.oftc.net#okfn

Just a reminder that another of our regular Wednesday evening IRC
meetups takes place tonight from 1830 *GMT* onwards on the #okfn
channel at oftc.net.

You can connect via a standard irc client or using the mibbit web
client available at:

 <http://ur1.ca/4fh>

If anyone's got anything they'd like to discuss, propose or work on,
please drop in!

Regards,

Rufus
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Jonathan Gray | 5 Feb 16:32

Website update

Hi all,

We've just finished making some changes to the main OKF website.

Old front page:

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwyg/3255160461/

New front page:

  http://www.okfn.org/

We've also simplified, updated and added a few pictures to:

  http://okfn.org/projects
  http://okfn.org/events
  http://okfn.org/about
  http://okfn.org/contact

What do people think?

We haven't yet tested it on IE. It would be great if people could let
us know if there are any problems on IE or other web browsers - you
can upload any screenshots to:

  http://okfn.org/wiki/WebsiteRedesign

Warm regards,

Jonathan
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John Bywater | 5 Feb 17:51
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software clubs

Hi Jonathan,

Nice to bump into you today!

Thanks for reminding me about Cofundos, I've made a note on the above 
Clubs page:
http://appropriatesoftware.net/foundation/Clubs.html

I would be very interested to learn more about the Cofundos process. 
Maybe some of the Cofundos people are on this list? :-) In particular, I 
would be interested to hear how well it works for variable scope 
proposals. It appears to be designed for fixed scope work. It starts 
with a list of missing features, and pays out at the end only when they 
are successfully realised (apparently). It doesn't appear directly to 
coalesce different actors working across identical domains. Therefore, 
it appears to reflect a market based approach, where vendors make 
offers, customers make bids, and payments are made when procured goods 
are delivered.

The software club process we've arrived at seems to be slightly 
differently constituted. There are two levels: domain and proposal. 
Central to the software club process is connecting with a definite 
domain of work. Actors working within the domain are invited to become 
members of the club. Members simply consent to the proposal for the 
club, which defines the scope of objectives and the general strategy of 
the club. The strategy is normally to share analysis and software 
development on an incremental and indefinite basis. Then within these 
indefinite iterations, the club host relentlessly builds consensus 
around variable scope proposals to build capacity within the domain.
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Jonathan Gray | 6 Feb 00:04

Recommendations on Open Government from computer scientists and computing practitioners

Interesting recommendations on open government from Association for
Computing Machinery - including on making data available for re-use:

  http://freegovinfo.info/node/2394

J.

----

The Washington policy committee of the Association for Computing
Machinery, the professional association that represents computer
scientists and computing practitioners, released its Policy
Recommendations on Open Government today.

The really important thing about these recommendations is that they
reflect an understanding that there is a difference between
"presenting" information, usually in the form of a web site, and
providing the underlying data that anyone can then "present" or use or
re-use. As David Robinson said in an earlier proposal, "[I]s a
government monopoly on 'presentations' of the data the best way...?
Probably not. If Congress orders the federal bureaucracy to provide a
web site for end users, then we will all have to live with the one web
site they cook up" (The (Ironic) Best Way to Make the Bailout
Transparent, By David Robinson, Freedom to Tinker, January 27th, 2009)

Among the recommendations:

    * Data published by the government should be in formats and
approaches that promote analysis and reuse of that data.
    * Citizens should be able to download complete datasets of
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Jonathan Gray | 6 Feb 00:15

Tim Berners-Lee and 'Raw Data Now'

Tom Heath of Talis points out that Tim Berners-Lee alludes to Rufus
Pollock regarding his 'raw data now meme':

  http://tomheath.com/blog/2009/02/raw-data-now-dot-com/

J.
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Jonathan Gray | 6 Feb 00:48

New OKF identi.ca group

For all you identi.ca users out there, I've just created a new group
for people interested in open knowledge:

  http://identi.ca/group/okfn

A reminder that the OKF also has an account, should anyone who is not
already subscribed wish to do so!

  http://identi.ca/okfn

J.
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Gmane