Data licensing [was Re: GMTKN database, answer from Lars Goerigk/Stefan Grimme]

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Peter Murray-Rust

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Oct 29, 2010, 5:41:53 AM10/29/10
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On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Mark M <markj...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Peter,

That is what I thought. But my co-workers want to make double sure
that everything is fine.

Mark

On Oct 29, 10:14 am, Pablo Echenique <echeniqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe I am missing something here, but, if you calculated everything again,
> then the output files are yours, and you can do with them whatever you want,
> can't you?
>
> I agree that it is a good thing to ask Prof. Grimme for courtesy, specially
> since he has been so supportive, but nobody can own a set of "molecules" and
> the positions of the nuclei, right?
>
> Maybe I am not right and people can claim ownership over
> compilations/collections of things.
> Please correct me if I am wrong.

Unfortunately in Europe they can. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_Directive . It is one of the things that Europe can feel shamed about as it protects the rich and ;powerful information companies (music, media, etc.) and disadvantages the commons - like us.

The way forward is to specific declare the contents of the work to be in the public domain. It's therefore critical that we add an Open licence to our outputs. See http://pantonprinciples.org/  and http://okfn.org

Almost all scientists want their work to be re-used and give it freely. Some wish to protect it for various purposes. The Open licence will make it clear that the data is completely open and that data from Quixote will never require explicit permission. Explicit permission not only takes time and effort - as we are seeing - but also causes downstream problems.

Of course we should attribute the authors. This is done by "community norms". So a community norm is that we ask that any data from Quixote be acknowledged. This might be a simple pharse or we might publish this and ask for a citation. As data citations become common it is likely that Quixote will suggest it be cited in this way.

[Suggest the wiki links to this discussion]




--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069

Pablo Echenique

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Oct 29, 2010, 2:33:43 PM10/29/10
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Done in http://quixote.wikispot.org/Bookmarks

There are sooo many stupid laws about the copyright of information!
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