Chris Holmes wrote:
The week before last I attended a 'science commons' conference (see:
http://www.spatial.maine.edu/icfs/), with the goal of trying to get
some answers about using creative commons licenses for geodata, and
perhaps eventually something like a 'geo-commons' license. I did
get some decent answers, which hopefully will be worked in to their
more generic open data FAQ - in short they do believe is possible to
use CC licenses for geodata. But I think we'll have to keep pushing
to get more specific licenses for geodata, and indeed good marketing
for them, which I think is very important.
I'll try to write up more of what I found out soon, but I'd love to
hear more on what people might want out of creative commons licenses
(either actual or in the same style) for geodata. My thinking right
now is both an LGPL and a GPL style 'share alike' (both require
contributions back, one can be combined with other layers, other
says all layers must be in a similar license), an attribution one,
and I guess a non-commercial one (though that's a huge can of worms
that I can't get my head around - how exactly do you define
'non-commercial'). Thoughts? (I'll post a more detailed write up
on the OSGeo geodata list and wiki: https://geodata.osgeo.org/)
As I've not seen any response to this (rather than the DRM stuff), can
I briefly add a "woo yay" here, followed by a "count me in if you want
to work on this stuff"?
Every two months we have a licence jihad over on the Openstreetmap
lists, which usually founders on the rock of whether our current
licence (CC-BY-SA) is actually applicable to geodata or not. Clarity
and standards would help enormously. I've actually gone some way
towards drawing up a tentative open geodata licence which attempts to
answer some of the issues (not specifically for OSM, but for open
geodata in general) and would be interested to compare notes.
A couple of notes on terminology, though: strongly recommend against
describing anything as "LGPL-like" or "GPL-like" as that tends to
provoke jihadist reactions; and even the phrase "creative commons" is
not too helpful for data that is, in essence, factual rather than
creative.
cheers
Richard
cider-swigging Anglican rather than wine-drinking Catholic
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