Oil and Water:
When Data Licences Don't Mix

Leigh Dodds
@ldodds

Bristol Open Data meetup, January 2014

IANAL

DATA LICENSING
Where Are We?

State of Open Data Licensing

Clear data licensing is (increasingly) common

Choosing a licence is easy

Plenty of guidance available

Licence proliferation is becoming a problemVanity licences

LICENCE COMPATIBILITY

When Is Compatibility Important?

If I improve a dataset, then what licence can I apply to my new version?

What happens when datasets are mixed together?Can we comply with all the licences?

What licence can I use on the combined dataset?

DESCRIBING
LICENCES

Attribution

Non-Commercial

Share A Like

No Derivatives

LICENCE COMPATIBILITY
(for derived works)

A Single Dataset, Remixed

No Derivatives, No New Dataset

No Derivatives?

No Dataset!

(but you could just share your additions, or a means to create them)

Share-a-Like? Then Limits On Licensing

Share-A-Like?

Must UseSame Licence

Multiple Datasets, Remixed

No Derivatives, No Dataset

No Derivatives

No Dataset!

Share-A-Likes Don't Mix

Share-A-LikeNon-Commercial

No Dataset!

Share-A-Like

Least Open Wins

More Open

Limited to Least Open Licence

Less Open

LICENCE
RECOMMENDATIONS

CC BY 4.0

(for content AND data; compatible with UK-OGLv2)

CC0

(public domain, ftw!)

Further Reading

Publishers Guide to Open Data Licensinghttp://theodi.org/guides/publishers-guide-open-data-licensing

Reusers Guide to Open Data Licensinghttp://theodi.org/guides/reusers-guide-open-data-licensing

Licence Compatibilityhttp://bit.ly/lic-compat

Licence Proliferationhttp://bit.ly/lic-prolif

CC 4.0 and Open Datahttp://theodi.org/blog/cc-40-and-open-data

Image Attribution

Oil Abstract, Alternate Tim Sacktonhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/sackton/7941527304

Creative Commons Iconshttp://creativecommons.org/about/downloads

Lawyer Miroslav KURDOVhttp://thenounproject.com/term/lawyer/10320/

Database Shmidt Sergeyhttp://thenounproject.com/term/database/9658/

Turntable Renaud Mignereyhttp://thenounproject.com/term/turntable/11623/