Thursday, September 30, 2010

UK Open Government License


Version 1.0 of the UK's Open Government License has been released, as developed by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (good to see a stationery office that thinks beyond paperclips and printer paper!) It is similar to a Creative Commons attribution license with some added bits. Press release here - choice quote:
Commenting on the launch of the new licence, Lord McNally, Minister for The National Archives and Public Sector Information, said: 'The National Archives isn't simply a repository of our nation's history, its task is to bring information to life, make it accessible and enable its re-use. This innovative licence gives everyone the opportunity to create products and services which benefit society.'
update: there's some information from Beth Brook about why the Open Government License was developed, rather than using a Creative Commons license. In summary: they wanted a single license that covered both copyright and database rights, covering all UK jurisdictions, and which was as simple as possible (rather than having a simple summary but complex legal language).

update 2: post on data.gov.uk about the license encouraging use of the license by local authorities.

update 3: analysis from eaves.ca on how this positions the UK.


Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Rooted economy directories

The growing list of rooted economy directories in this blog's sidebar is now a package in CKAN. CKAN is an open registry of data and content packages. You can download the directory list as a CSV file.
We maintain the list using Coopy, an experiment in distributed data collection.

"Have you and a colleague ever ended up with two versions of the same spreadsheet, with a mess of independently-made changes that now need to be merged? Coopy makes that problem go away."

Coopy applies the fossil distributed version control system, normally used for software development, to the problem of data collection.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

More funding!

The DCP has received a grant for tech development from the Cooperative Charitable Trust (founded by Bob Giel). Thanks very much!