City of Windsor Open Data Catalogue
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City of Windsor Open Data Catalogue
 
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Via-Opengovernment list Also see comments about TOU! In a wonderful bit of timing, the City of Windsor released released an -- Tracey P. Lauriault 613-234-2805 <input onclick="if(typeof(jsCall)=='function'){jsCall();}else{setTimeout('jsCall()',500);}" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"> |
Re: City of Windsor Open Data Catalogue
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The city of Windsor have taken the unfortunate path of conflating
their web site terms of use with their data license (or more properly have included their data release in their web site terms of use). Reading the terms of use (http://www.citywindsor.ca/privacystatement.asp) and the bit of text on the top of their "Open Data Catalogue": "Citizens are encouraged to use or re-purpose the City of Windsor's open data for research purposes or to improve their interaction with municipal services and facilities. Members of the community can use the raw data provided here to create and share resources from maps to applications and more." Some problems: - there are no re-distribution rights - the TOU says "Users may download one copy of the Materials for the sole purpose of non-commercial private use or study". Building a non-commercial mashup (that you share with the world) I would consider 'non-commercial public' use and is therefore not allowed. - "The User shall not in any way alter, manipulate or modify the Materials or otherwise distort the Materials". Altering the data for clarity, merging it with other data sets and other reasonable transformations would likely not be allowed. They did not express this very well. I believe I understand their intent, but they threw out the baby with the bathwater. This license is even further from Open Data than the licenses used by Vancouver, Ottawa, etc. They did get one thing partially right, however: they don't quite have the retroactivity of the the other Canadian cities' licenses: "By using this website you are agreeing to be bound by the then current version of these Terms of Use. The City reserves the right to change or modify this site at any time without notice. This would include any future enhancement or features that may occur on the site as well." Of course, having version numbers instead of having users (and the city's lawyers) keep track of the license by download date would likely make everyone's life easier. And do they have an internal versioning system that would be able to reproduce the 'Nov 1 2010' version of the website terms of use? Also, they need to version their datasets. -Glen On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote: > Via-Opengovernment list > > Also see comments about TOU! > >> >> In a wonderful bit of timing, the City of Windsor released released an >> Open Data Catalogue: http://www.citywindsor.ca/003713.asp >> >> Its a small set of largely spatial data : points and shape files but >> its a start. Myself, Paul Synott and others are working on hosting an >> Open Data Hackfest to celebrate and work on this data: >> http://www.citizfaction.ca/index.php/latest/137-open-data-comes-to-windsor >> >> At the moment, I'm working on possible ideas for projects for the day >> and in doing so, I was looking for some guidance about the whole >> matter of terms of use. According to Richard Weait, an active >> contributor to OpenStreetMap, the current language used in conjunction >> Canadian Municipal data sets is too restrictive to allow for uploading >> these points into OSM. >> http://weait.com/content/unintended-restrictions >> >> Is this considered a very strict reading of the current terms of use >> agreements? >> >> Actually, the real question behind the question is this: is ok for >> someone like myself to upload the data catalogue of the City of >> Windsor into such sites as http://geocommons.com/ or elsewhere? >> >> Mita Williams >> http://www.aedileworks.com/ > > -- > Tracey P. Lauriault > 613-234-2805 > > > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss > -- - |
Re: City of Windsor Open Data Catalogue
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1 - God forbid anyone made their mashup public.
2 - And make a profit? That would be downright unpatriotic. Cities like Montreal and Halifax give data to Google to power their route finder and profit from ads. We can't let locals compete with US corporations!
3 - Don't even *think* about using the data to make government accountable.
On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 11:50 PM, Glen Newton <[hidden email]> wrote: The city of Windsor have taken the unfortunate path of conflating |
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