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Re: Wrong! Re: Canada Census on line

Posted by Frank Warmerdam on May 04, 2006; 5:49pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Canada-Census-on-line-tp525p549.html

Jason Loughead wrote:
> You are way off base here. What makes you think the browser debate doesn't
> include open standards on the internet?
...
> Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data (CivicAccess) is a
> group of citizens which believes all levels of government should make civic
> information and data accessible at no cost in open formats to their citizens.

Jason,

I'm not sure citizens submitting census data falls into Civic Access's
mandate to ensure government makes data accessable for free in open formats.
If datasets were being provided to citizens in an inaccessable form (like
say as .mdb files for instance) then I would see why we would object.   If
if the data download site was IE only, I could see us objecting.  But is
our mandate to ensure that all government services are done according to
open standards?  That is a much broader mandate.

In fact, I would suggest that we would be better off focusing on ensuring
the data is made available under terms that allow us to redistribute and
transform it in preference to making a stink about formats.  As long as we
can get key datasets with the appropriate rights of redistribution we can
fix problems with restrictive formats, though of course we would like to
encourage open standards in distribution formats.

Best regards,
--
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, [hidden email]
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
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