Open Data Commons; new draft attribution licence for data/databases

This item was posted on Peter Suber’s blog a couple of weeks back requesting futher circulation.  It points to draft text for a “Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By)”

The draft licence is still open for comments. http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/

According to the Peter Suber blog the work on this licence is addressing the need for:

“.. an open license for data/databases that provides for attribution but does not impose share-alike requirements. …”

The Open Data Commons website has some FAQs about why data licences are important.  They say:

“…licensing and definitions are important even though they are only a small part of the overall picture. If we get them wrong they will keep on getting in the way of everything else. If we get them right we can stop worrying about them and focus our full energies on other things.”

Nicely put!  Further on they explain:

“…you do need this legal stuff. Whether one likes it or not there are a whole bunch of jurisdictions in the world where there are IP rights in data(bases). Thus if you want your data to be open, even if that means public domain, you need to apply a license (or something very like a license).”

For licence text already available visit http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/

Collaboration for innnovation

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3cdb6a48-5f46-11de-93d1-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Great article on the FT management blog looking at innovation from a management perspective.   How can organisations utilise “social network analysis” for the purpose of ensuring effective collaborative networks?  Effective networkers, the article says, are “efficient value creators”.  

I particularly like the technology system described whereby:

“[meeting attendees have] electronic badges containing data about what each attendee did – so that when colleagues with overlapping knowledge and expertise stood close to each other, lights on their badges would flash.”

Genius!  This could have undoubtedly have useful applications even within an organisation’s HQ…

This subject is related to intellectual property management for a number of reasons.  It’s not only the traditional connections between innovation and IP, but also that these networks and sharing platforms require IP attention in terms of agreements, rights and authorship.  Finally, in the ongoing challenge for intellectual property professionals to raise awareness of IP issues within an organisation, you need to be an effective collaborator yourself!

Follow-up post; IP issues for development 2.0

https://casipblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/incorporating-the-power-of-the-unintended-into-development-work%e2%80%a6/

Following on from yesterday’s blog post regarding development 2.0  there is plenty of evidence that some players in the non-profit world are already embracing these technologies and riding the Web 2.0 wave.   Another link from the PSD blog post was to an article outlining some examples of “development 2.0” projects.  http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/use/2496.  It came from a site that provides information and resources for data sharing (amongst other things).  Also http://www.web2fordev.net/ has a host of information on this topic.

There are of course intellectual property implications!  Many of these web based opportunities rely on data sets and of course collaborations between data sets are required for effective data sharing.  The fumsi.com article says:

“getting datasets out of their respective databases is certainly a challenge due to intellectual property issues and data interoperability”

So the message to IP practitioners is, by all means share — but beware!

Incorporating the power of the unintended into development work…

http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2009/03/development-20-the-challenge-of-planning-for-serendipity.html

I have blogged a couple of times about “development 2.0“, as discussed on the Private Sector Development Blog of the World Bank.  On a recent post (today’s lead link) they say:

“One of the reasons why Development 2.0 is so hard for many traditional development players to embrace is that it challenges the linear thinking of logical frameworks and the (sadly) still deeply engrained assumption that a project needs to be a success almost by default if it is to get funding from donors.”

By way of example they link to a TED talk  about the unintentional uses of “twitter” 

http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/03/ted-talk-twitter-the-power-of-the-unexpected-.html

The speaker talks through some of the user-generated uses for twitter, which started life as a “side project” and will no doubt be entering the English language as a new verb shortly, if it hasn’t done so already!

(If you watch the Ted Talk be prepared to feel sorry for the speaker at the end who becomes a victim of twitter’s real-time comments in a live setting…!)