Why and How: Making Data Open

Our similarly-named-but-unrelated-peers, the Open Data Commons, have posted a guide to making your data open, briefly explaining why you might want to do it, and how to do it right.

Here's their take on why open data is important:

[Open data is] crucial because open data is so much easier to break-up and recombine, to use and reuse.

And their take on the need for clear licensing:

Licensing is important because it removes uncertainty. Without a license you don’t know where you, as a user, stand: when are you allowed to use this data? Are you allowed to give to others? To distribute your own changes, etc?