[Freegis-list] Geographic data licencing

[Brent Wood]

(Sorry Jan- back to the list where I intended it originally...)

> licensing for geodata is indeed a matter that needs further discussion.
> So far, most datasets are Public Domain or some BSDish license, some
> are GNU GPL. Some CC are interesting as well.
> 
> For FreeGIS, this remains an open discussion. Of course some things
> are clear, such as: limited use or no right to distribute renders
> a dataset non-free.


A couple of points on this:

The licence used by Land Information New Zealand 
(LINZ, see "Licence Agreement" link at
http://www.linz.govt.nz/rcs/linz/pub/web/root/core/Topography/TopographicData/topodtabase/index.jsp
)
 
seems similar to the BSD licence. Once purchased ($2500NZ), you can just
about do what you like with it except hold LINZ liable. You can
sell/give/rework as you desire. Overall, I like it. I believe (but haven't
checked recently) that
much of the Australian and Canadian government data is under a similar
licence.
 
I'm sure someone here knows the US situation better than me, though I do get
a great deal of useful data from various US sources.

However, the LSLIFF format LINZ supply the data in is pretty useless without
a reformatter. Local distributors of commercial GIS software purchase the data,
reformat for their software & resell as a commercial product. So the LINZ
freely
redistributable data has not really been freely available.

I have recently obtained a free copy of the LSLIFF data & have it converted
to shape files, so it can be given away & used wherever. (I'd like to set up a
mapserver with a PostGIS database, but 'tis another story...)
 
Third+ hand recipients/users of the data must still be covered by the LINZ
copyright & disclaimer, as well as any licences required by the intermediaries
who may have added some value, and can therefore apply a commercial licence to
their version of the data. Up until my "free as in speech & beer" version, the
only useable versions of this data were covered by restrictive commercial
licences (on top of the LINZ copyright & disclaimer) and commercial prices,
(justified as being for a range of supposedly added value).

This at least is one example of a national dataset of vector (& ortho's)
being provided under a pretty facilitative licence.

 
Also worth perusing if this topic is gonna be discussed, is a book covering
this topic, from a different perspective, but with some interesting points,
'tis at  http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309092671/html/4.html
 
I understand data licencing was also a topic at the GeoBusiness Conference
2000, regarding European datasets, but this was mentioned in passing, I don't
know relevent/useful it was.

 
Brent Wood