Hi all, I guess some of you are on the W3C Linked Data community list, however I wanted to point those who are not to this interesting debate about openness. Thanks to Adrian for this statement.
Sorry for cross posting. Regards Daniel Begin forwarded message: > Resent-From: [email protected] > From: Adrian Pohl > Date: 10. März 2011 15:15:14 MEZ > To: Linked Data community <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Design issues 5-star data section tidy up > > Hello Martin, > >> requesting open licenses in the narrow sense basically means requesting the >> end of intellectual property on the Web. > > Quite the opposite is true. Every license (whether open or not) is > necessarily based on intellectual property rights. So, using open > licenses in fact generally strengthens the legal force and > applicability of intellectual property right. > > What the OKFN's open definition (OD)[1] does is standardizing > licensing in the sense that all licenses following the OD standard > might be combined and mixed as you would like to without resulting > legal discrepancies. The underlying aim is legal compatibility so that > you don't have to care about legal stuff at all when you combine data > or content from different sources. Thus, the open definition is > sometimes called a meta-license. IMO, "Open standards" are rightfully > the legal counterpart to the technical Linked Data best practices. > (Though these aren't solely technical because the used standards are > all in the public domain, otherwise something like the WWW and L(O)D > wouldn't be possible...) > >> And yes, I agree with Christopher that the extreme notion of "open" is an >> ideology, not a technology. Being able to automate the evaluation of what >> you can do with the data is a technology. Requesting that all data must >> belong to everybody with no strings attached is ideology. > > Nobody requests that "all data must belong to everybody with no > strings attached" - this is only when you want to get five stars. As I > understand it the open requirement is very much in line with the > history of the web as it evolves around open standards and was > established to share knowledge. One has to respect that. It's > compatibility (technical as well as legal) that matters, not ideology. > > You could write a "commercial definition" to define licensing > standards for commercial data publishers to reach compatibility in the > world of commercial data providers and non-open licenses... > > Adrian > > [1] http://www.opendefinition.org/ > > 2011/3/10 Martin Hepp: >> Hi Egon, >> >> for mashing / reusing data, you do NOT need widely open licenses; what you >> need are >> 1. STANDARDIZED licenses >> 2. that are identified by a URI so that you can simply evaluate what you are >> allowed to do with the data by simple URI comparison. >> >> Proprietary licenses are problematic, because you cannot automatically >> evaluate what you are allowed to do with the data; that's clear. But a >> standardized license that says >> - "caching forbidden" or >> - "all triples attached to a subject in this graph must be preserved when >> republishing parts of this dataset" or >> - "foaf:page and foaf:homepage links attached to entities must be displayed >> in all HTML renderings of the data" >> >> would not really impede the mashing and reuse of data. >> >> And yes, I agree with Christopher that the extreme notion of "open" is an >> ideology, not a technology. Being able to automate the evaluation of what >> you can do with the data is a technology. Requesting that all data must >> belong to everybody with no strings attached is ideology. >> >> A lot of relevant data represents (at least partly) copyrighted works, and >> requesting open licenses in the narrow sense basically means requesting the >> end of intellectual property on the Web. >> >> Again, URIs for standardized licenses would be sufficient, however narrow >> the licensing terms may be. >> >> Martin >> >> >> On Mar 10, 2011, at 8:48 AM, Egon Willighagen wrote: >> >>> Hi Christopher, >>> >>> On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 8:27 AM, Christopher Gutteridge >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> "Is that bad? For Linked Data to be useful, you need to be able to mix and >>>> share.". Sorry but that's simply not true. For it to be useful *to you*, >>>> perhaps, but (Closed) Linked Data still has massive value as a technology >>>> and not all data should or can be fully open! >>> >>> Data consumption is indeed a 'use' too. Like watching the Simpsons. >>> Sorry for being sloppy there. There most certainly is a place and use >>> for Linked (Closed) Data. >>> >>>> Linking and Openness are two unrelated, but great, things to do but you can >>>> do them independently. There is still value in data which is Linked but not >>>> entirely or even slightly open. >>>> >>>> Open is the gold standard, but it's not the only form of Linked Data. >>> >>> Indeed not. And apologies for implying that Linked Data is bad in >>> itself. It simply disallows certain important use cases, which is what >>> I wanted to say. >>> >>>> There's a massive value to companies to produce Linked Intranets which will >>>> link and use open data from outside, but certainly not be open. >>> >>> Linked Data often needs dedicated, often individual licensing to keep >>> things going. While inefficient, there is a valid choice. >>> >>>> At the heart of our university are lectures. From a Linked data >>>> perspective, >>>> these are a motherlode of linkage. A lecture is the nexus point joining: A >>>> room, eg. <http://id.southampton.ac.uk/room/59-1257> with a lecturer, eg. >>>> <http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/60> with a number of students, with the >>>> URI of a Module >>>> <http://data.southampton.ac.uk/module/COMP1004/2010-2011.html> and the >>>> specific instance of that module >>>> <http://id.southampton.ac.uk/module-instance/10622/2010-2011> and resources >>>> for that lecture <http://www.edshare.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/455> . However, >>>> unlike most of our other data, it would take a huge policy decision to make >>>> this information freely available, but I can still make it available in a >>>> closed form to a student or staff member, upon authentication, which means >>>> that they can still have it on an iphone app / google calendar etc. >>> >>> So, can a student actually start a cool webservice where students can >>> mashup their classes with FaceBook? They will be redistributing the >>> data. Are they allowed? Are they allowed to fix errors and share >>> those? Are they allowed to make some profit out of it, to pay for the >>> Amazon EC2 hosting? If your data is not Open, they cannot. >>> >>>> Linked is a technology. >>>> Open is an ideology. >>> >>> I do not think that is true. Instead, I see them as both technologies: >>> they are both inventions to make things possible. >>> >>>> Right now <http://id.southampton.ac.uk/dataset/eprints> is technically >>>> should get ZERO stars as it's very complex to work out what license we have >>>> the right to use. >>> >>> And why is that? It sounds to me this is because your upstream data >>> provider is zero star? Should a star-rating system fail (or ideals >>> change), because the UK law system is, umm, akward? >>> >>>> Some of the abstracts of papers may legally belong to >>>> publishers and it may be OK for us to publish and distribute tham as data, >>>> but not to grant licenses on something we don't own. >>> >>> Well, I'd be the last to say the current publishing practices are >>> technologically working efficiently :) I've ranted enough about that >>> in my blog. >>> >>>> This dataset is on two >>>> journeys, one ends with an open license (silver to gold), one with it >>>> getting fully linked into the data web (* to *****). They converge at the >>>> heady heights of 5 gold-star fully linked and open data. >>> >>> I fully understand how hard it is to not be able to join the party, >>> because your data providers are not cooperating, as they limit you >>> what to do with their data. But I feel bad about that deciding what >>> our ideals should be. >>> >>> Instead, I would suggest SOTON to split data sets, and makes parts of >>> it Open (those for which it can), and make the Closed bits separately >>> available as Closed. That way, you still get your FIVE stars. >>> >>> See, 'Open' is a technology: the fact that some closed data >>> "copylefts" the whole package doesn't sounds like an ideological, but >>> really a technological (legal) problem to me. But this can be simply >>> overcome to make them separately available, I think, just like Bio2RDF >>> and others do. >>> >>> Egon >>> _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
