Hey Folks,
I'm interested to gather some resources that helps explain what liscencing options exist for Geographic Data. Or perhaps even just data in general. Many sources just go straight for the Copyright Act. For the public or open domain what exists? The Ottawa GRASS Users Group (OGUG) [http://cemml.carleton.ca/OGUG/\], is in the process of prepairing another publicly available dataset like the spearfish set, however focusing on the local region. If you have insight to Canadian liscence laws, please let me know.
Would software liscences or documentation liscences be more closely connected to data?
I figure that Creative Commons can easily be applied to geographic data.
The Free Software Foundation does not endorse, but cites Design Science, a "copyleft" approach. They also list GNU Free Documentation Liscence, FreeBSD Documentation Liscence, and Open Publication Liscence.
GPLdata.com looks promising but no explanation if it is a liscence, or just a repository of data. Does their use of GPL relate to GNU Public Liscence or some other abreviation.
What liscence might protect the data gatherer from liability.
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|Dave Sampson: Geographic Information System (GIS) Technician |
| |
|Centre for Sustainable Watersheds |
|Cooperative Approaches to Protect Canada's Water Resources |
| |
|14 Water St, P.O Box 280. Portland Ontario, Canada. K0G 1V0 |
|Lat: 44.700 Long: -76.19 |
|www.watersheds.ca gis@watersheds.ca |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
This topic has been somewhat debated and discussed on the openstreetmaps mailing list. This UK effort for creating road data and making it freely available has had to deal with the same questions you are asking about. Off the top of my head, they were discussing using the creativecommons.org attribution and share-alike licensing methods, but also discussed more. Have a look at their archives over the last couple months to see:
http://bat.vr.ucl.ac.uk/pipermail/openstreetmap/
Hope that helps,
Tyler
Dave Sampson wrote:
Hey Folks,
I'm interested to gather some resources that helps explain what liscencing options exist for Geographic Data. Or perhaps even just data in general. Many sources just go straight for the Copyright Act. For the public or open domain what exists? The Ottawa GRASS Users Group (OGUG) [http://cemml.carleton.ca/OGUG/\], is in the process of prepairing another publicly available dataset like the spearfish set, however focusing on the local region. If you have insight to Canadian liscence laws, please let me know.
Would software liscences or documentation liscences be more closely connected to data?
I figure that Creative Commons can easily be applied to geographic data.
The Free Software Foundation does not endorse, but cites Design Science, a "copyleft" approach. They also list GNU Free Documentation Liscence, FreeBSD Documentation Liscence, and Open Publication Liscence.
GPLdata.com looks promising but no explanation if it is a liscence, or just a repository of data. Does their use of GPL relate to GNU Public Liscence or some other abreviation.
What liscence might protect the data gatherer from liability.
Dave,
see the freegis list archives for th last month or two. This has been a
topic there recently, with some references that may be of interest.
Brent Wood
On Thu, 11 Aug 2005, Dave Sampson wrote:
Hey Folks,
I'm interested to gather some resources that helps explain what
liscencing options exist for Geographic Data. Or perhaps even just data
in general. Many sources just go straight for the Copyright Act. For the
public or open domain what exists? The Ottawa GRASS Users Group (OGUG)
[http://cemml.carleton.ca/OGUG/\], is in the process of prepairing
another publicly available dataset like the spearfish set, however
focusing on the local region. If you have insight to Canadian liscence
laws, please let me know.
Would software liscences or documentation liscences be more closely
connected to data?
I figure that Creative Commons can easily be applied to geographic data.
The Free Software Foundation does not endorse, but cites Design Science,
a "copyleft" approach. They also list GNU Free Documentation Liscence,
FreeBSD Documentation Liscence, and Open Publication Liscence.
GPLdata.com looks promising but no explanation if it is a liscence, or
just a repository of data. Does their use of GPL relate to GNU Public
Liscence or some other abreviation.
What liscence might protect the data gatherer from liability.
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|Dave Sampson: Geographic Information System (GIS) Technician |
| |
|Centre for Sustainable Watersheds |
|Cooperative Approaches to Protect Canada's Water Resources |
| |
|14 Water St, P.O Box 280. Portland Ontario, Canada. K0G 1V0 |
|Lat: 44.700 Long: -76.19 |
|www.watersheds.ca gis@watersheds.ca |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+