Hi all,
The government have a consultation going on at the moment about the future of the Public Data Corporation. The PDC is responsible for commercially valuable public data including Ordnance Survey, Land Registry and Met Office data. While the government is releasing a lot of data under the Open Government License (which is compatible with Wikimedia's content as it basically boils down to government-branded CC BY). In fact, we have added OGL photos to Commons and some of them are now in use on enwiki.
But the data controlled by the PDC could potentially be of use to Wikimedians: the Ordnance Survey and Met Office data could be used to produce better, more detailed maps of Britain and those images can be reused by projects like Wikipedia (to illustrate place names), Wikinews (for original research stories), Commons, Wikibooks/Wikiversity (for geography textbooks/tutorials etc.).
Being able to merge government-produced data that we have funded the creation of (through taxation) with volunteer produced content (through Wikimedia, Open Street Map, free and open source software) could dramatically help our mission of supporting the spread of free and open knowledge. The Dutch government recently agreed to release a lot of their geographical information for free, and it'd be great if the UK could too.
Is there any interest in putting together a response to the government's consultation on the Public Data Corporation basically saying we're firmly in favour of the government releasing as much as they possibly can under free licenses. We could do this either as Wikimedia UK or, if that isn't kosher with the charity application, as "Wikimedians in the UK" or something. ;-)
Yours,
A good idea, in principle.
Small point of order though: I was of the understanding that OGL is not quite compatible with CC-BY - AFAIK, it's something to do with database rights. I'm not an expert on this, though, and am happy to be corrected.
Richard Symonds
On 6 Oct 2011, at 15:16, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
Hi all,
The government have a consultation going on at the moment about the future of the Public Data Corporation. The PDC is responsible for commercially valuable public data including Ordnance Survey, Land Registry and Met Office data. While the government is releasing a lot of data under the Open Government License (which is compatible with Wikimedia's content as it basically boils down to government-branded CC BY). In fact, we have added OGL photos to Commons and some of them are now in use on enwiki.
But the data controlled by the PDC could potentially be of use to Wikimedians: the Ordnance Survey and Met Office data could be used to produce better, more detailed maps of Britain and those images can be reused by projects like Wikipedia (to illustrate place names), Wikinews (for original research stories), Commons, Wikibooks/Wikiversity (for geography textbooks/tutorials etc.).
Being able to merge government-produced data that we have funded the creation of (through taxation) with volunteer produced content (through Wikimedia, Open Street Map, free and open source software) could dramatically help our mission of supporting the spread of free and open knowledge. The Dutch government recently agreed to release a lot of their geographical information for free, and it'd be great if the UK could too.
Is there any interest in putting together a response to the government's consultation on the Public Data Corporation basically saying we're firmly in favour of the government releasing as much as they possibly can under free licenses. We could do this either as Wikimedia UK or, if that isn't kosher with the charity application, as "Wikimedians in the UK" or something. ;-)
Yours,
-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 15:31, Richard Symonds chasemewiki@gmail.com wrote:
Small point of order though: I was of the understanding that OGL is not quite compatible with CC-BY - AFAIK, it's something to do with database rights. I'm not an expert on this, though, and am happy to be corrected.
I'm not sure of the details, given that the things we have been using on Wikimedia Commons have been photographs and there aren't really database rights issues to consider...
Tom,
I see no problem with WMUK responding, as a charity we can engage in these areas of government policy development as they affect our open knowledge mission directly.
Perhaps (if we can squeeze it in to the day) this would be a good topic to encourage discussion on at the next London wikimeet, or at least canvass for interested names to help with discussing and writing up a response?
Cheers, Fae -- http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
On 06/10/2011, Richard Symonds chasemewiki@gmail.com wrote:
Small point of order though: I was of the understanding that OGL is not quite compatible with CC-BY - AFAIK, it's something to do with database rights. I'm not an expert on this, though, and am happy to be corrected.
AIUI, CC-by was the preferred option, but the wording was not considered sufficiently legally robust in the UK for government use - hence OGL. It's certainly *intended* to be effectively CC-by.
- d.
On 6 October 2011 07:31, Richard Symonds chasemewiki@gmail.com wrote:
Small point of order though: I was of the understanding that OGL is not quite compatible with CC-BY - AFAIK, it's something to do with database rights. I'm not an expert on this, though, and am happy to be corrected.
IANAL, but I did work with the ones that came up with OGL and implemented it.
OGL is essentially CC-BY with additionally-released database rights; this means that it's what CC-BY would have been had it been implemented in the EU, rather than the US. As I understand it, an OGL item (be it a database, an image, or otherwise) can be used as if it were CC-BY and combined with CC-BY (or more stringent, e.g. CC-BY-SA) items, which is Wikimedia's use case. There are no problems in using OGL works within the Wikimedia family, or taking such works and re-using them commercially - indeed, these were two of the core use cases we were trying to encourage.
However, I believe that it is possible to construct some situations where CC-BY content cannot be merged into an OGL item (something about a database created by an EU individual which they release under CC-BY but do not waive their Database Right) - but this is outside of the Wikimedia family's use case, and I believe should anyway be dealt with by CC-4.0 which looks to include the Database and Moral Rights.
Hope this helps.
Yours,
On Thu, 2011-10-06 at 15:16 +0100, Tom Morris wrote:
Being able to merge government-produced data that we have funded the creation of (through taxation) with volunteer produced content (through Wikimedia, Open Street Map, free and open source software) could dramatically help our mission of supporting the spread of free and open knowledge. The Dutch government recently agreed to release a lot of their geographical information for free, and it'd be great if the UK could too.
Is there any interest in putting together a response to the government's consultation on the Public Data Corporation basically saying we're firmly in favour of the government releasing as much as they possibly can under free licenses. We could do this either as Wikimedia UK or, if that isn't kosher with the charity application, as "Wikimedians in the UK" or something. ;-)
Tom,
I tend to agree that 'something' should be done and/or said.
Where I think a point should be made in relation to some of the data where a high return can be made from taxpayer investment is that they should *not* lock it up for decades and decades.
I'd give Ordinance Survey as an example. As they re-survey areas to add in new developments, they should be laying down the timeline/route to that data being freely-licensed, and ultimately entering the public domain.
Licensing new map data to commercial interests will only generate income over a period of probably no more than a decade - likely less. I'd argue that after that period the full, highly detailed, data should be CC-BY with an "enters the public domain in X years" clause that can't be dicked with every time Steamboat Willie is threatened with big-eared legal Chinese knock-offs.
Brian McNeil.
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org