Open Data Stack Exchange
Open Data Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [licensing]

Licensing Open Data is the act of granting (or not granting) authoritative permission or license to others.

Licensing is essentially granting/denying permission to do something.
Licenses can be defined in a wide-variety of methods; some of the most common are certificates, tags, plates, and identification cards/badges. Note that licenses differ from permits, in that generally a permit is temporary; most permits are issued with an expiration date.

Licensing in regards to Openness (and therefore Open Data):
Licenses & Standards at the Open Source Initiative:
Open Source licenses comply with the Open Source Definition, permitting software to be freely used, modified, and shared.

Open Knowledge Definition 1.0
A full set of conditions which must be met in order for a license to be open is available in the Open Knowledge Definition 1.0.)
http://opendefinition.org/od/1.0/index.html

OSI Open Source Licenses
http://opensource.org/licenses
Popular OSI Licenses Apache License 2.0
http://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" license
http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" or "FreeBSD" license
http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
GNU General Public License (GPL)
http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license
GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License (LGPL)
http://opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license
MIT license
http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
Mozilla Public License 2.0
http://opensource.org/licenses/MPL-2.0
Common Development and Distribution License
http://opensource.org/licenses/CDDL-1.0
Eclipse Public License
http://opensource.org/licenses/EPL-1.0

Complete List of OSI Approved Licenses
http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
Guide to Open Licensing
http://opendefinition.org/guide/
Guide to Open Data Licensing
http://opendefinition.org/guide/data/
List of Conformant Licenses
http://opendefinition.org/licenses/
List of Non-Conformant Licenses
http://opendefinition.org/licenses/nonconformant/

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Why should I care how a (structured) dataset is licenced?

When thinking about "Open Data" (possibly due to nothing more than my own ignorance) I am utterly confused as to what difference an open licence legally makes for structured data. "Open Data" for me is a bit like saying "Free Air". From discussions…
badroit
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Can you use data if no data license is explicitly stated?

There are quite some datasets out there that simply doesn't contain an explicit license (e.g. CC-BY). At best a one-line statement is given that the data is "open data". Can I simply state that when the data is available without an explicit license…
Andra
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Is there a difference between open data and public data?

I was wondering if there were differences between "open data" and "public data"? In this SE group, the two terms seem to be used interchangeably, but I feel that they are not interchangeable. This excellent page gives a very good definition of open…
Marcus D
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Is data scraped from Govt agencies and in public domain considered open data?

We have been scraping information regarding oil wells drilled in a particular state using web scraper from the state regulatory agency. This agency provides an arcane interface for this information. Theoretically i can obtain information for any…
GeoH2O
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Requirements of the Open Data Commons Attribution License

When OCLC released their WorldCat data under Open Data Commons Attribution License last year, there was a question in the library community as to exactly what would be required for adequate attribution if you were to use the data in a mashup. OCLC…
Joe
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Data licensing question

So here's the situation: I built a database (text file) that consists of a few sets of data (for example, but not really), "car name", "car parts", etc. The "car name" data and others are under no copyright, but for "car parts", I used two others…
f3tus
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License for data that precludes government/surveillance use

I have been looking for a few weeks now for a license that has the same force as the HESSLA, namely, restrictions on the use of software for human rights violations or user surveillance, but applied to data sets (which I believe present more risk…
bright-star
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No-attribution open license, applicable to documentation

I am choosing a license for a number of documents. I want a license that: allows reuse/modification even for commercial purposes does not require attribution Forces re-users to keep the same level of openness is rather famous, at least most…
Nicolas Raoul
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Are there general terms of service or licenses for ESRI's ArcGIS FeatureServer?

Is it reasonable to assume publicly accessible data on ESRI ArcGIS FeatureServer is (or can be used as) open data? For example, Boston has a number of FeatureServer instances such as this one, but on that page I do not see an explicit license or…
eric brelsford
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Data License Model for "Use, don't share"?

Is there a data license model which allows private usage but not sharing/publishing results or further sharing of the data? The reason: I am an open source software developer and in case of user bug reports which are data specific, e.g. non…
Jan Hackenberg
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Which licence do I need to link to when using a resource under CC BY 4.0 Generalitat?

I am using this WMS endpoint: https://terramapas.icv.gva.es/0202_2022CVAL0025?service=wms&request=getcapabilities The XML source says: CC BY 4.0 Generalitat I know that standard CC BY 4.0 licence requires me…
zabop
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Checklist for soliciting non-identifiable data from FOSS-users for open data project

So, looking at geonames, I am finding that there are a significant number of blindspots regarding zipcode mappings. Many countries are missing. Some countries have abbreviated data (prefixes in zipcodes only are listed in Canada for 'copyright…
Chris Travers
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List of all different data license types and their respective restrictions?

I was hoping someone knew where I could get a master list of licences commonly used for datasets and the restrictions that each license imposes. Something like { "Public Domain": { "commerically_available": True, …
John Allard
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