Hi Dan,
At 04:31 04-06-2015, Daniel Laeng wrote:
>Nicely put!
Thanks,
>It isn't clear to me what you mean, because I don't know what
>current copyright, or license is used. (And I'd imagine different
>agencies do different things).
>
>I'm guessing you are saying that the copyright of data is currently
>assigned to the government agencies, rather than the State of
>Mauritius? Is that right? If so, a more explicit wording would be:
>
>The rights to all data collected by government agencies should be
>assigned to the State of Mauritius, rather than the government or agencies.
The copyright has likely been influenced by a decision which was
taken many years ago. Some copyright notices, e.g.
http://www.govmu.org/English/Pages/CopyrightNotice.aspx are similar
to the Crown copyright. I don't know whether anyone has paid
attention to the copyright used by government agencies. What I am
saying is that we will support a copyright notice making it clear
that the work has been created by the State of Mauritius instead of a
copyright notice which says that it has been created by a government agency.
Within the context of Open Data, the licensing is more relevant as a
restrictive license may prohibit redistribution. I did not use the
more explicit wording as it is better to discuss about this matter
publicly unless there is already agreement on the wording which you proposed.
>Ouch - brutal honesty.
This is based on factual information. The World Bank official
previously commented that "the data does not meet the definition of
being open".
>BTW, I'd use the word "non-existent" rather than "inexistent"
>("inexistent" isn't used much in English any more)
Thanks, that's also what the O.E.D says.
>Finally, I can think of one point which is currently missing, which
>I think is relevant (but possibly controversial):
>
>(f) All data collected by the government of Mauritius, should be
>considered Open by default
>
>Data collected by the government of Mauritius should be released
>back to the taxpayers who paid for the collection. This should be
>the default position, and exceptions should be made on a case by
>case basis for sensitive data that can't be released (due to
>national security, privacy, or other reasons).
I prefer to cover (f) under Item (a). There is a difference between
"data collected by the government" and "data collected on behalf of
the government". I should have added the following under (a):
All data paid for through public funds be made available for public use
unless the government agency can provide a valid reason for keeping the
data secret.
I used the word "secret" as it might be easily understood by people
in Mauritius.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
Received on Thu Jun 04 2015 - 13:35:35 PST