non‑open data standards / presentation and diagram

[Robbie Morrison]

Hello all

I have been concerned for a year of so now about the use of non‑open data standards — often published by industry associations and/or standards setting bodies — and their potential adverse legal effect on so‑informed codebases and databanks within our domain.  My recent presentation to an open source law workshop is now available on zenodo.  And my key message is given in the graphic below — with the likely answers to the two questions posed in burnt orange regrettably "yes" and "yes" under copyright and allied rights law.  Which is why community initiatives like the Open Energy Ontology are so important.  More here from Ludwig Hülk at the openmod Vienna workshop on that project (URL should jump to the correct timestamp):

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsxK3Y189ko&t=1184s
  

Here are the details of my workshop presentation:

• Morrison, Robbie (15 May 2023). Can non-open data standards legally taint conforming codebases and databanks? — Release 02. Berlin, Germany: Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) Legal and Licensing Workshop (LLW) 2023. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7937197. Minor post‑presentation improvements. Creative Commons CC‑BY‑4.0 license.

And the diagram I mentioned is below, while noting:

• I would not normally use the term "digital twin" with this community but as most of the audience were non‑technical, that phrase is quite evocative
• I have taken to referring to data standards as "semantic standards" because they inform the frameworks and scenarios as much as they do the datasets
• less formal standards are sometimes submitted to standards setting organizations (SSO) for approval — with the resulting legal consequences as under discussion given that informed works might also class as derivative works under copyright law
  

The European Commission is currently attempting to regularize those SSO terms of use (usually known as FRAND) but the only thing that will work for open analysis is probably CC0‑1.0 OR MIT (note the SPDX OR conjunctive operator present) — I am still currently exploring the need for an explicit open source license in this context, but I see Fedora is now rejecting CC0 licensed code due to unwaived patent rights (as per my instinct), more here.

with best wishes, Robbie

PS: Last week I added this rather uncharming patent trolling case law to Wikipedia, so none of this is remotely hypothetical.

-- 
Robbie Morrison
Address: Schillerstrasse 85, 10627 Berlin, Germany
Phone: +49.30.612-87617