William Thanks for your well-considered comments. Microsoft tools generate open formats such as CSV and XML, so the concern listed in your second paragraph is not applicable to my effort. I can use Excel to gather data and then migrate that data to MySQL without in any way compromising the open data nature of my work. I certainly agree that if a purportedly open project uses a proprietary format thereby compelling users to buy software to see the results, that the project is not truly open.
I want to explain to the list why I feel so strongly about this and why you may get the impression that I am making a moral argument. I used to work with financial modeling tools and data sets at a rating agency. As you know, rating agencies and financial models were blamed for the deep recession that started in 2008. I believe that if the models and data had been more open, they could have been subject to a wider peer review and thus could have become more effective. In 2011, I came across the book Macrowikinomics, which talked about applications of wiki technology to various industries including finance. The book spent a few pages favorably discussing a new firm called Open Models Valuation Company (http://www.omvco.com), which was going to open up the world of financial modeling. I was excited to learn about this innovation and immediately contacted the company. Eventually a representative got back to me. During our chat, he advised me that the company had not published any open source models and did not intend to do so. This seems to me a case of false advertising, and thus worthy of criticism. Open software and data can address many of society's problems - including bad credit models. Organizations that talk the talk of openness, and then fail to walk the walk should be called out by this community. Cheers, Marc -----Original Message----- From: William Waites [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2013 1:09 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] about open access but not open access On Sat, 4 May 2013 07:20:52 -0700, "Marc Joffe" <[email protected]> said: > What tools one uses to > assemble the open data is not important (as long as the tools' > licenses do not restrict distribution of the work product). Marc, I don't have a strong opinion about whether one should only write open access things about open access. I think the moral argument is a bit silly -- the justification should be that if you want your work to matter, to be built upon, it has to be accessible. In scientific and quasi-scientific disciplines where reproducability of results matters, the whole process must be open otherwise if nobody can try the same experiment and come up with the same results, it might all have been made up. No need for moral arguments (which tend to get people's backs up anyways). Now, the tools do matter. Because it means that without using those tools, which I may not have access to (I don't), I can't check your work. This means I have to trust that you didn't make any errors in creating the data, and if I do find errors I can't easily fix them in a way that maintains the integrity of the process. This is very important. Otherwise the open data comes out of a black box and we have no way of knowing what it means or to what extent it can be relied upon. -w _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/okfn-discuss
