Posted by
Russell McOrmond on
Feb 26, 2013; 8:15pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/The-case-for-context-in-defining-Open-Data-tp5474p5485.html
On 13-02-26 01:58 PM, Ted Strauss wrote:
> For those who couldn't access the link, the post is up at:
>
http://blog.trudat.co/the-case-for-context/ I'll suggest this same conversation happened in the Free Software
movement decades ago, even before the term "open source" was coined, and
I'm skeptical the "open data" movement is all that different. It is
good to have these conversations, but hopefully the "open data" movement
will learn from the more senior Free Software movement.
When you move beyond making data or software able to be collaborated
with a greater audience you will always run into political disagreements
about wanting this software/data to only be used for "good" and not
"bad" things. You then quickly find out that we do *NOT* all agree on
what "good" or "bad" means, and that as soon as we engage in these
conversations to limit "bad" uses any ability to collaborate breaks down.
In the FLOSS movement you have people collaborating on the creation of
multi-purpose software who often have strongly opposing ideas of what a
"good" use of software is. The fact that software could be used for a
"bad" purpose, as personally defined by one of the participants, must be
ignored in order for the collaboration and software to exist in the
first place.
Thus I reject the idea that we should look at opening as being related
"to achieve one’s goals in the context of a particular situation" given
collaboration will happen between diverse (and sometimes strongly
opposing) goals and be used in diverse contexts. To focus on these
things will only slow down or cease the opening of the software/data,
pushing software/data towards the alternative.
The alternative is that the only software that gets written or data
that is collected is controlled by proprietary suppliers, with the
software/data benefiting the interests of those suppliers and not any
larger public(s). In my mind, no matter what your particular personal
goals may be, this is a bad outcome for anyone who isn't that supplier.
The Weenusk First Nation is worried that if mapping data about their
land is made more widely known, then this will harm them. This ignores
the fact that the data is likely already commercially available to
mining companies, so it isn't like this is going to make the land any
more open to that type of exploitation than it was before. Even if the
government refused to sell to commercial entities (a highly unlikely
scenario in the current political climate), those with the greatest
financial incentives may do their own proprietary mapping which will
serve their proprietary interests.
What opening data does is make the data available to *others*. Those
*others* can put the data to what the WFN considers "good" purposes or
"bad" purposes, but given mining is one of the greatest concerns
expressed (and they already have the data) it seems to reason that the
potential new (and as yet possibly unimagined) "good" uses the data can
be put to is likely going to outweigh the "bad".
I've said this already, but I strongly believe WFN's concerns about
mapping date being more widely published is misplaced -- if anything,
less access to data for potentially "good" purposes will harm WFN's
ultimate interests.
--
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <
http://www.flora.ca/>
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