I figured I'd pull this out into it's own thread. Although I assume that VIAF is non-commercial licensed because it's hosted on a site carrying the OCLC Research license with it's non-commercial stipulation, the OCLC has been maddeningly opaque about what the actual license is. They've made the assertion in various informal settings that it's freely available, but then always add caveats.
In 2010, they said licensing would be clarified in the "next few months." https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/nyt_linked_open_data/RuoAJ249Wi4 A year ago, they said there were "no restrictions on use" but then added that prior approval was needed to get access to dumps. They also mentioned potentially moving to Open Data Commons ODC-By or ODC-ODbL. http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2011/03/use-of-viaf.html In neither case have they actually changed the licensing on the site and they haven't publicly responded to queries about why the dumps can't be made available for download if the data really is freely available. Perhaps OpenLibrary should make a formal request for access to the dumps to use under a CC0 or ODBL license? Tom _______________________________________________ Ol-tech mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
