Stewart, Governments are writing open data policies, creating open data portals, and adopting the OGL-CA Licence because they want their data to be used. There are many benefits for governments to do this. It makes them appear more transparent, it supports citizens, businesses and researchers, and it largely relieves them from having to monitor and police the licensees of their data (although I suspect that little or no effort was ever applied to monitoring licencees).
So we know their intentions, we have a very permissive licence, and the chance of OGL-CA licence issues arising are very, very slim. We should stop fretting over the OGL-CA derived licences and start mapping. I don't hide inside my home for fear of being struck by lightning and I don't refrain from mapping with data that has a very permissive licence. It's not a perfect licence but nothing in life ever is perfect. Best regards, Bernie. Bernie Connors, P.Eng Geomatics Engineer and Civil Servant New Maryland, NB Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Bell network. Original Message From: Stewart C. Russell Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2017 12:05 AM To: talk-ca@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] Crowdsourcing with Statistics Canada Hi Bjenk - > I am not sure why there is confusion about Ottawa's ODL and it's > equivalence to OGL because the information is public but here it is to > clarify: > > "The Open Data License is based on version 2.0 of the “Open Government > Licence – Canada” which was developed through public consultation and > consultation with other jurisdictions" I sense your frustration, and understand that this process must be trying. But it's partly an artifact of the licence itself. The Open Government Licence - Canada, version 2.0 (OGL-CA) is compatible with OSM's licence. This was confirmed in 2013: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2013-November/005906.html (Paul Norman tells me that there's an official notice somewhere from Government confirming this, but neither he nor I can find it.) Unfortunately, one trait of the licence inherited from its parent (the Open Government Licence United Kingdom 2.0, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/) is that it is not _reusable_. Here, reusable means that the licence is not specific to an organization or jurisdiction. The OGL-CA has Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada baked in as Information Provider. No-one but the Federal government can be that Information Provider. So even if Municipality of X wished to adopt the “Open Government Licence - X” by replacing ‘Canada’ with ‘X’, it would have to make textual changes to the licence, and in doing so — and this is the critical part — makes a new and different licence from the OGL-CA. (Paul N. previously suggested that the UK OGL was more reusable, and had better CC BY and ODC BY compatibility than OGL-CA.) So we can't use Ottawa's data under the Federal OGL-CA. Even with the best intentions, adoption of the OGL-CA results in fragmentation. For example, there's the "Open Government Licence – Ontario", the "Open Government Licence – Toronto" and the "Open Government Licence - Toronto Public Library". All of these, though based on OGL-CA, are *different* licences, and necessarily so. Accepting the OGL-CA hasn't allowed OSM to automatically accept all the derivatives under it. (It also helps that OSM explicitly has a statement from the Federal Government saying that we have permission to use their data. This permission does not flow down to provincial or municipal data.) If one happens to be a government, or a large commercial entity, one can muster lawyers to ensure one's continued existence if there's a legal challenge. OpenStreetMap doesn't have that luxury. In order to ensure continuity of the OSM project, a degree of caution is required. So while access to open data is valued by the community, it would be lovely if someone could pay for all the lawyers needed to go over the licences on behalf of OSM/OSMF too. To the best of my knowledge this assistance has seldom been forthcoming. Best Wishes, Stewart _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
