Launch of Open Government Licence

[MPearce]

Good afternoon all

We are very happy to launch the Open Government Licence today. The
OGL provides broad rights to re-use government information by
dissemination, adaptation and exploitation. The OGL will be the
default licence for UK Crown copyright, replacing the Click-Use
system, the data.gov.uk terms and conditions, and various other
mechanisms. It is based on the Creative Commons model, and we thank
Creative Commons UK and Open Data Commons for their advice and
assistance on the project. The UK Government Licensing Framework sits
alongside the OGL, and explains policy around where and how the
licence will apply. As promised on a previous thread, please find
links to the docs below:

Permanent URI for the OGL: http://reference.data.gov.uk/id/open-government-licence

Framework: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/uk-gov-licensing-framework.htm

We would welcome thoughts and feedback on the OGL and accompanying
policy, as there remains opportunity to tweak and optimise them.

Best regards

Matthew Pearce
Standards Adviser

The National Archives
5th Floor, Ministry of Justice
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

T: 02033345261

[Peter Crowther]

On a first reading - and I Am Not A Lawyer - the section of OGL that requires compliance with DP98 would appear to be a Further Restriction under GPLv3 sections 7 and 10 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).  This would make software released under OGL incompatible with GPL and LGPL (though not FDL, on my reading).  I'd appreciate someone who Is A Lawyer checking this, however!

I have to say I don't understand why you regard the OGL as an appropriate licence under which to release software.  It seems appropriate for data, but the terms are very peculiar if they're intended to cover software as well.

[Leigh Dodds]

Hi,

On 30 September 2010 14:47, Peter Crowther

<peter.c...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On a first reading - and I Am Not A Lawyer - the section of OGL that
> requires compliance with DP98 would appear to be a Further Restriction under
> GPLv3 sections 7 and 10 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).  This would
> make software released under OGL incompatible with GPL and LGPL (though not
> FDL, on my reading).  I'd appreciate someone who Is A Lawyer checking this,
> however!
>
> I have to say I don't understand why you regard the OGL as an appropriate
> licence under which to release software.  It seems appropriate for data, but
> the terms are very peculiar if they're intended to cover software as well.

Isn't this a license for public sector information rather than
software? I've had another look through the guidance and didn't see
any mention of software licensing (although I might have missed
something).

Cheers,

L.

--
Leigh Dodds
Programme Manager, Talis Platform
Talis
leigh...@talis.com
http://www.talis.com

[MPearce]

Leigh, Peter

Thanks for your messages. In terms of volume the bulk of the content
available under the licence will be text / data. So yes, the licence
is primarily aimed at public sector information. There was also a
need to consider the policy on licensing of software. This was done
in the Framework document (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
information-management/government-licensing/software-and-open-
source.htm). This allows government developers to release code to
open source projects under the native licences. It also establishes
the OGL as the default in other cases. We are open to feedback on
this one.

Regards

Matthew Pearce
Standards Adviser

The National Archives
5th Floor, Ministry of Justice
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

T: 02033345261

On 30 Sep, 15:43, Leigh Dodds <leigh.do...@talis.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 30 September 2010 14:47, Peter Crowther
>

> leigh.do...@talis.comhttp://www.talis.com

[Peter Crowther]

On 4 October 2010 15:57, MPearce <matthew...@nationalarchives.gov.uk> wrote:

There was also a
need to consider the policy on licensing of software.  This was done
in the Framework document (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
information-management/government-licensing/software-and-open-
source.htm).  This allows government developers to release code to
open source projects under the native licences.  It also establishes
the OGL as the default in other cases.  We are open to feedback on
this one.

I believe establishing the OGL as the default *for software* is a mistake.  Combining software from different sources is already a licensing nightmare, as there are sometimes subtle incompatibilities between the licences.  For example, I believe OGL and GPL/LGPL are probably incompatible, though OGL and Apache2 are probably OK.  I believe this will probably inhibit the takeup of OGL-released code.

Given that the OGL allows commercial use, why not default to a permissive license such as MIT for code?

- Peter

[benplouviez]

I'm sure (though IANAL either) that GPL and OGL are incompatible,
because OGL is not share-alike. That seems to me to invite scenarios
where companies take public sector code, improve it, and then sell the
whole lot back to the public sector as though they own the whole
rights. Surely the aim must be to be able to allow a company to charge
for the improvement, but not for the original? In that case, neither
OGL nor GPL fits the bill.

I'm not sure this has been thought through. Releasing software code is
surely not so much a "transparency" issue as an economic one, and
should start from the commercial realities rather than the openness
agenda?

Ben

On Oct 5, 12:11 pm, Peter Crowther <peter.crowth...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[6tricky9]

As others have said, the OGL is a licence designed specifically for
the release of government information and *not* software. It really
is bad practice to release code and information (text/data) under the
same licence, unless we are just talking about README files.

Richard Melville
cellularity.co.uk

[Zeth]

On 8 October 2010 15:03, 6tricky9 <6tri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It really
> is bad practice to release code and information (text/data) under the
> same licence, unless we are just talking about README files.

Interesting point, why? I can think of many border cases where code
and data are hard to distinguish. [e.g. I automatically generate
classes based on ontologies generated from data. These classes are
then used by people in code.]

[Michael Saunby]

I'd also be interested in knowing why. My best guess is that the
purpose of licenses is to restrict what others can do - otherwise
what's the point? Hence the set of things you'd not want others to do
with a map is not the same as the set of things you would not want
them to do with encryption software.

Michael

[6tricky9]

On Oct 25, 6:36 pm, Michael Saunby <m...@saunby.net> wrote:
> I'd also be interested in knowing why.  My best guess is that the
> purpose of licenses is to restrict what others can do - otherwise
> what's the point? Hence the set of things you'd not want others to do
> with a map is not the same as the set of things you would not want
> them to do with encryption software.

The view that I was expressing was my own; others may disagree.

A computer program is a complex instrument and as such requires a
complex licence. A document, on the other hand, is very much simpler
and does not require the same level of complexity in its licence.
This is not to say that everything cannot be released under the same
licence, but I believe that it is not good practice.

One example would be of both a computer program and its
documentation released under the GPL. If the documentation was
later distributed on paper, then the paper copy would have to include
a copy of the GPL in order to comply with the terms of the GPL.
However, that would not be necessary if the documentation was
released separately under a bespoke document licence.