Big list of directories

The "links to other directories" section on this blog has been growing steadily over time, as Noemi digs up more and more directories related in some way to what we've been calling the "rooted economy." Here's a snapshot of the list, for those following by RSS or email:

• .coop Directory
• A Greener Indiana network groups
• Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network listings
• British Columbia Co-operative Association Members
• Buy Fresh Buy Local - Oklahoma
• Buy Fresh Buy Local Food Guide (CA)
• Buy Fresh Buy Local Nebraska
• Buy Fresh Buy Local Pennsylvania
• Buy Washington Organic
• CA Certified Organic Farmers Directory
• Canadian Cohousing Network
• Canadian Housing Coop Listings
• Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Find Local Food
• Cascade Harvest Coalition Members & Friends
• Changing Maine Directory
• CLT Directory
• Co-op Month - Co-op Directory
• Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada
• Colorado Organic Producers Association Members
• Community Bike Programs Directory
• Community Garden Database
• Community Land Trust Directory
• Community Supported Fisheries Locator
• Complementary Currency Resource Center
• Coop Members of NCDF
• Cooperative Grocer Food Co-op Directory
• Craft Cooperatives Directory
• Credit Union Locator
• CSA Farms in NW Michigan & beyond
• CSI Support & Development Services
• Directory of locally-owned and operated businesses in New Orleans
• Directory of Rural Farmer, Rancher, and Fishery Cooperatives
• Eat Well Guide: Local, Sustainable, Organic Food
• EcoBusinessLinks Green Directory
• Economie Sociale Quebec
• Employee Owned Companies in Massachusetts
• Examples of Mid-Atlantic Cooperatives
• Fair Trade and Small Farm Producers
• Fair Trade Federation Members
• Farm Fresh - Local food in RI, CT, MA
• Find a BALLE Network
• Find an Independent Business Alliance
• Florida Organic Growers Directory
• Georgia Organics Directory
• Go.Coop
• Good Earth Guide to Ohio Organic & Ecological Farms & Gardens
• Green America's National Green Pages
• Hawaii Organic and Certified Products and Producers Directory
• Intentional Communities Directory
• Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy
• Land Stewardship Project Community Based Food & Economic Development
• Linux User Groups
• Local Currency Directory
• Local Dirt: find & buy local food
• Local Fork Directory
• Local Harvest
• MA CDC Members
• Maine Local Foods, Farmers, CSAs
• Mass. Farmers' Markets
• Michigan Farmers Market Association
• Michigan Organic Food & Farm Alliance Eating Organically Guide
• Mid-Atlantic Alliance of Cooperatives Members
• Missouri Organic Association Member Farms Map
• NAHC Member Associations
• NASCO Guide to Co-ops
• National Co-op Directory
• National Environmental Directory
• Natural Food Coop Directory Service
• Naugatuck Valley Project Directory (pdf)
• NCFC Member Directory
• NCGA member co-op grocery stores
• NCRC Members
• Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society 2010 Conference Exhibitors
• NeighborWorks Lookup
• NEPPA Members List
• NOFA-CT Business Members
• NOFA-CT Farm and Food Guide (Google map)
• NOFA-CT Organic Farms, Farmers Markets, CSAs, and Community Farms
• NOFA-MA Organic Food Guide
• NOFA-NH Food Map
• NOFA-NH Partners
• NOFA-NJ Find a Farm
• NOFA-NY Business Members
• NOFA-NY Farmer's Pledge Registry
• NOFA-RI Business Members
• NOFA-VT Business Sustainer Members
• NOFA-VT Find Organic Food
• NY State Rural Electric Cooperatives
• NYC Fair Trade Coalition "Where to Buy" Map
• NYC Solidarity Economy map
• NYC Worker Cooperatives
• Ohio's Employee-Owned Network Companies
• Oklahoma Food Connection
• Ontario Co-op Association e-Directory
• Pennsylvania Certified Organic Directories
• Pioneer Valley Sustainable Development Inventory
• Regional Farm & Food Project Directory
• Regional Index of Cooperation
• SF bay grassroots economy wiki
• Solidarius
• Sonoma County GoLocal Cooperative member business directory
• State CED Associations
• Stronger Together: A Directory of Maine's Cooperative Economy
• Sustainability Hub for San Mateo County
• Sustainable Farming Connection
• The Vegetarian Homesteader's Guide(tm)
• Tilth Producers Directory
• Time Banks Directory
• US Solidarity Economy Network Member Organizations
• USFWC Members
• Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives Members
• Veggie Trader
• Vermont Employee-Owned Companies
• Worker Cooperatives in the Bay Area

If you know of a directory that isn't on the list yet, please share!

Best practice for open data, a reading list

It can be hard to convince data-sharers that data being "freely available" on a web-page isn't the end of the argument about whether that data can be reused. Here's a collection of postings I've found helpful in understanding the issues.

• Openness and licensing post by Rufus Pollock
• Best practice for data availability roundup by Cameron Neylon.
• Guide to Open Data Licensing at Open Definition.
• The Panton Principles
• A post discussing the panton principles which has an interesting back-and-forth in the comments.

For comparison purposes, it is worth looking at the history of software repositories. For example, Debian has 20,000+ packages within it (depending how you count), covering every kind of software under the sun (and beyond, stargazers should check out the "stellarium" package). A typical package will depend on a dozen or so other packages, which in turn depend on others. It is a massive work of aggregation. There are huge technical challenges, but underlying the solution is the Debian social contract and their Free Software Guidelines. Here are the guidelines in full:

1. Free Redistribution

   The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

2. Source Code

   The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form.

3. Derived Works

   The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

   The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form _only_ if the license allows the distribution of patch files with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified.)

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

   The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

   The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

7. Distribution of License

   The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

8. License Must Not Be Specific to Debian

   The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a Debian system. If the program is extracted from Debian and used or distributed without Debian but otherwise within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the Debian system.

9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software

   The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be free software.

10. Example Licenses

    The GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that we consider free.

There's a lot going on here, and not all of it applies to data. But the desired outcome could perhaps be summarized as:

• We want stuff than can be collected, mixed, and redistributed to others, who can in turn do the same.
• We only want stuff that expressly permits such activity, and where the owners don't have any requirements that make such activity excessively complicated.
  

While data and software are different, projects like the DCP (and many others) would like to see this same outcome achieved for data. A challenge is that there is so much data out there that is "freely available" on a random website, but doesn't expressly permit aggregation, or state any requirements on allowed use. And yet, almost certainly, there are implicit requirements (no commercial use! no use by organizations my members disapprove of!) which may or may not have legal force but certainly ought to be respected by a well-behaved aggregator, even if the only way to respect them without splitting up the "data commons" too much would be by omitting the data entirely.

Linking with International Projects

There are a few key "data commons"-like projects that I think we should be following, connecting with, and perhaps collaborating with. A primary question for the DCP, I think, is: to what extent can we draw from and learn from (possibly adapt) the technologies of these projects (all open source) to serve DCP's goals? Are there things that DCP can contribute to these projects?

Mapping databases:

http://www.zoes.it/ (Italian)
http://www.solidarius.com.br/ (Portuguese)
http://www.fbes.org.br/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3748&Itemid=215 (Portuguese)

Brasil also has a site that does social networking for their SE enterpises:

http://cirandas.net/ (Portuguese)

It uses this application:

http://noosfero.org/Noosfero (English)

With regards to this last application, it's built (like the DCP application) in Ruby on Rails. Is it possible that DCP could integrate it into our current work and have a readily-useable social networking/online commerce application up-and-running fairly quickly?

datapkg: data/knowledge packaging

Via the Open Knowledge Foundation Blog, we're excited to see datapkg maturing. This is a command-line tool for discovering, installing and sharing data packages. If you are familiar with Linux, the idea is to do for data what apt-get/aptitude/dpkg do for programs, with registries like CKAN playing the role for data that Debian or other distributions do for programs. For example, with datapkg installed, one can do something like this:

$ datapkg search ckan:// economics
stw_thesaurus_for_economics -- STW Thesaurus for Economics
energy-stern-review-economics-climate-change -- The Stern Review -- The Economics of Climate Chanage
repec -- Research Papers in Economics
unstats -- United Nations Statistical Databases
usa_bls_employment -- USA Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population, 1940 to date
eurostat-gfs -- Eurostat - Government Finance Statistics (GFS) Data
numbrary -- Numbrary
economagic -- Economagic Economic Time Series
pl-budget -- Poland - Ministry of Finance - Budget
econ-alfred -- ALFRED: ArchivaL Federal Reserve Economic Data
ehnet -- Economic History Services Databases
eu-cohesion-beneficiaries-ie -- EU Cohesion Beneficiaries - Ireland
nl-statistics -- Netherlands - Statistics
econ-gdp-historical -- World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2003 AD
esfdb -- European State Finance Database
econ-fraser -- FRASER - Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research
fi-budget -- Finland - Valtiovarainministeriö - Budget
econ-fred -- Federal Reserve Economic Data
ceprdata -- CEPR Data

$ datapkg info ckan://econ-gdp-historical
## Package: econ-gdp-historical

name: econ-gdp-historical
title: World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2003 AD
version: None
license: Non-OKD Compliant::Other
author: None
author_email: None
maintainer: None
maintainer_email: None
url: http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/
download_url: http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_03-2007.xls
notes: ### Author

Angus Maddison

### Openness: Not open

  * No license
  * Plus following statement attached to link to data: "Last update: March 2007, copyright Angus Maddison"

### Format

  * xls (excel)
tags: ['economic', 'history', 'gdp', 'license-not-specified', 'data']
extras: {}

$ datapkg install ckan://econ-gdp-historical .
Registering ...
Created on disk at: ./econ-gdp-historical
Downloading package resources ...
horizontal-file_03-2007.x 100% |=========================| 1.5 MB    00:03

$ ls -R
.:
econ-gdp-historical

./econ-gdp-historical:
horizontal-file_03-2007.xls  metadata.txt

In other words, it gets a whole lot easier to discover and install data in an organized fashion. One exciting thing about that is that this opens the door to propagating changes and updates in a sane way, a topic near to our hearts. Good stuff!

Solidarity Economy Maps

The DCP has recently made contact with a few groups affiliated with the Solidarity Economy Network that are working on mapping the solidarity economy in their locations. These are greater Philadelphia, New York (with an emphasis on Brooklyn), and Monmouth County, New Jersey. Each group is at a different stage, but they are all eager to figure out how to make their efforts usable and shareable with others. Hence their interest in the Data Commons! Stay tuned -- one day these efforts will grow into what Ethan was describing in an earlier post on mapping solidarity economy networks.

Open Database License, version 1 is out

The Open Data Commons project (no relation) has released version 1.0 of its Open Database License (previously mentioned here). It is great to see someone with the legal savvy to put this together.

This license is an "Attribution and Share-Alike" license, doing for data/databases what the creative commons has done for media.

DCP work in the latest version of Gnumeric

A code contribution from a DCP developer (previously mentioned here) to the Gnumeric spreadsheet package has been included in their latest official release, gnumeric-1.9.8. The patch helps merging multiple sheets in separate files into a single spreadsheet. It is intended to aid automatic generation of complex spreadsheet views of online data for easy download.

data.gov goes live

The US Federal Government is putting some more of its data out there, at data.gov. Their full list of raw data at the time of writing comes to 47 "catalogs" with formats including XML, CSV, KML, ESRI, and a few RSS feeds. It is not very extensive at the moment compared to existing sources, but a good start. The site is clearly separated into the raw data catalog on one side, and the tools they have for exploring the data on the other. This means that third-parties could come along and make better tools with access to the same data, benefiting everyone. Within the data commons, we're following a similar model, where the data commons "repository" holds all the data, and our own online tools and API will not be privileged in any way. If someone can come along and visualize our data better than we can, then that would be great!

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?

Generating spreadsheets online

One of the advantages we hope the data commons will bring to data sharers is that we'll handle all the tedious format conversion issues that often raise the cost of collaboration.

Smaller organizations often prefer to work with spreadsheets rather than databases, so we are working to support export and import to spreadsheet formats, such as that of Excel.

The free and open source spreadsheet program gnumeric comes with a command-line utility ssconvert ("SpreadSheet convert") which is almost ideal for automating such conversions. For example, it can take the primitive CSV (comma separated value) format which is easy to generate from any source, and convert it to all the various Excel formats (and lots of other formats too).

A patch from a data commoner (myself) to support merging multiple workbooks was recently accepted by the developers of gnumeric. This is typical of how the free and open source software community works: someone benefiting from a public good extends it to meet a need they have, then contributes the extension for the benefit of all. This model is at the heart of what the data commons project wants to bring to the cooperative economy.