2009/4/24 Mr. Puneet Kishor <[email protected]>: > > On Apr 24, 2009, at 8:09 AM, Rufus Pollock wrote: > >> Should we write to them gently pointing out that this isn't really >> "open data" and asking them to remove the NC restriction in favour of >> e.g. Share-Alike. It seems rather disappointing to have a dataset like >> this with NC restrictions on it ... > > Why even SA?
Because it is clear that the providers of this dataset are concerned about reuse and redistribution (that is why they chose NC I presume). In such circumstances, I would imagine SA may be more attractive than e.g. BY in providing important guarantees that those you share with will share back (at least in theory -- the question to which any license open or otherwise is actually observed in practice can vary a lot). > One thing we all should do, and encourage others to do, is to examine > *why* we want to impose a license, any license. What good would a > license on my data do to me? What would a license take away? These are > important questions, instead of blindly applying a license du jour. I don't think SA is the "license du jour" and no-one is advocating blindly applying it. Of course people should think before applying a license (though if you make people think too much they are likely to just give up ...) Aside: And yes I do know the Science Commons views on SA and licensing generally ;) See my comments at: <http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/09/comments-on-the-science-commons-protocol-for-implementing-open-access-data/> And especially on SA: <http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/02/open-data-openness-and-licensing/> > If no good purpose is going to be served with SA, why put that > restriction? If all CRP wants is attribution then perhaps a BY license > would be good enough. My point was that (BY-)SA would be an open license (as would be BY) but that an NC license is not. The differences between (BY-)SA and BY seem much less important to me than the differences between them and an NC license. I'd be happy with either of them but it seemed to me much more likely that given their existing license choice that opensecrets.org would consider BY-SA than pure BY. Rufus _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
