Submitted by mgarrigap on Sun, 2012-04-29 18:50

Having a single Open Data license for all European Union is a great action to improve our Open Data sector.

According to the Fundación CTIC (the Spanish Office of the W3C) today there are more than 50 Open Data Portals in the European Union (I suggest you to see this Open Data Portals map: http://datos.fundacionctic.org/sandbox/catalog/faceted/).

Many of them are very simple, but some are among the best Open Data portals in the world: http://data.gov.uk is a good example.

So, there is a lot of open data available (even though our governments must to open more data).

There is a lot of data available, but building Open Data services is a pain.

Especially those services that use data from different Open Data portals.

There are 50 portals and this means that there are (almost) 50 different licences :(

So, this situation produces a big legal uncertainty.

It’s very difficult to build a service that feeds from several portals, especially when these portals are from different countries.

[It’s important to say that I use the word “licence”, I’m referring not only to a licence but also reuse rules, legal notices and "things" like these.]

The only future for Open Data lies in having services that reuse data from different sites.

Therefore, we need to harmonize the licences.

We need a single licence for all Europe.

This is the #1OdataLicenseEU initiative.

This initiative wants to publicise this need, to make Open Data community aware of the importance of having a single licence for Europe.

What do you think about it?

Are there other actions to do in order to improve our Open Data sector?

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I suggest you to read my speach (and presentation) about this initiative in last LAPSI conference (this March at Budapest): http://homemadebroth.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/presentation-of-1odatalicen...

Group audience:

Data

Comments

Briefly, readers coming to

Submitted by paul.miller on Sun, 2012-04-29 19:53

Briefly, readers coming to this thread afresh may want to read up on some of the earlier discussion here - http://daa.ec.europa.eu/comment/148#comment-148. Specifically, my "Good point - vanity may well," Marc's "Thanks Paul." and my response, "Weeeellll I worry that by." (Don't you just love the post titles that this forum software generates?).

A proper response to Marc's post here will follow when I get some time.

Quite proud of Marc and the

Submitted by egarciagarcia on Tue, 2012-05-01 08:41

Quite proud of Marc and the rest of the citizens that have promoted the debate of a single opendata license in EU. Although it could be seen as an idealistic objective, this is the approach we have follow in the National Government in Spain, and it is quite feasible if the political will is there. I recommend to read the English translation of the Royal Decree where we have introduced the single opendata license (legal notice in the annex) in our National Gov.

http://administracionelectronica.gob.es/recursos/pae_020002097.pdf

It is quite similar to other Open Government Data Licenses, so I wonder why it is not possible the same approach in Europe,

Thanks Emilio.

Submitted by mgarrigap on Wed, 2012-05-02 00:26

Thanks Emilio.

Yes, I think a single OpenData license is, or it should be, a need in order to have a single data market in Europe.

I want to remember that Digital Agenda has seven priority areas for action, one of them is creating a Digital Single Market.

Perhaps, as Paul said, to create this single OpenData license is not easy, at his point I want to remember that I’m referring not only to a licence but also reuse rules, legal notices etc.

I think the Spanish legal notice (provided here by Emilio) is a good example to copy or to start from it.

Also, I know that there is a similar initiative in English spoken OpenData portals, at this case, they start from Open Government License of The National Archives (UK).

Yes, it's not easy, but, we need it, so, when we start the discussion?

Nomatter what you do - keep

Submitted by Engberg on Fri, 2012-05-04 12:55

Nomatter what you do - keep Google away from data on people and from monopolising data.

In 2009, David Eaves wrote

Submitted by mgarrigap on Fri, 2012-05-04 14:52

In 2009, David Eaves wrote the Three Laws of Open Data:

http://eaves.ca/2009/11/29/three-laws-of-open-data-international-edition/

The first law is "If data can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist".

So, you're right, if you don't want to open data, then keep searchers away from data.

The concept of interconnected

Submitted by Oscar Wijsman on Fri, 2012-05-04 22:46

The concept of interconnected DataCapitals may be a solution because it will create a Single Digital Data Market in Europe. Data will only be stored in Europe (no issues with the US Patriot Act etc.), with the best price/performance and all kind of data services available. This may also boost eHealth on a European scale.

The release or placing on

Submitted by Olcoz on Thu, 2012-06-07 18:49

The release or placing on public domain of source code of an application is resolved with the EUPL license, which preserves the 4 freedoms or guarantees. The code does not cease to be a data type, right?
Perhaps the difference is in how other kind of data are interpreted as the source of the effect which we call execution and has also the peculiarity that needs other data so they can finish playing (if we let this generalization). As such and having a broad consensus and experience with EUPL license, I wonder if it could be adapted for freedom 0 in such a way it can "run" freely. I already proposed it in the PIP's Blog: http://pip.blog.euskadi.net/?p=2839 and there you can see that, for example, Roberto Santos did not seem it so absurd that he proposed to amend the EUPL for that purpose and, in fact, he did it so and then he submitted it to Neelie Kroes...

Thank Serafín, exactly this

Submitted by rsantos_tlf on Fri, 2012-06-08 10:37

Thank Serafín, exactly this is the proposal I made to Neelie Kroes:
http://daa.ec.europa.eu/content/single-opendata-license-all-eu-great-act...

This is the EUPL patch http://goo.gl/t7HL4

The Spanish version contains comments on specific changes http://goo.gl/v8Ldm

This is an important issue because the EUPL has managed to harmonize the software release process of the European institutions and member countries. Use the EUPL to leverage that data is getting traction and synergies in vision Open that should lead us to the restructuring of public sector processes to be more effective and appropriate to the needs of society (citizens and businesses in particular) for what which must obviously be open, transparent and participatory.
The European Commission can make a big push with a straightforward, inexpensive and fast: Take a EUPL 1.2 that covers data and protect the liberties of software in the environment "cloud" with a clause like "Affero."