[Talk-ca] BC2020 OD_tables wiki and project status

Stewart C. Russell scruss at gmail.com
Mon Jan 29 03:59:40 UTC 2018


On 2018-01-28 02:42 PM, Jonathan Brown wrote:
>
> Okay, I know the Open Data folks and Open Government folks in Ontario.

They're good people: say hi.

> I can raise this licensing issue and how this is a barrier
> to crowdsourcing and citizen science, something that they are keen on
> embracing. 

Just be a wee bit careful. Maybe it's my gruff Glaswegian demeanor, but
I get eyerolls/MEGOs when I bring it up. Every branch of government
wants us to use their data, but our inside baseball of process
requirements lose them.

One of the key issues is OSMF's avoidance of liability. The way I see it
is this:

* a muni won't sue an individual open data user as they don't have the
legal capacity to respond, and likely can't do much real reputational
damage to the local government

* a muni could sue a big corporate data user (say Google) who could do
something worthy of being sued, but also has the legal capacity to
review and accept the data licence, and also to respond to any suit with
a legal team.

* OSM is a big data user, doesn't have the legal bandwidth to review
hundreds of licences, and could well be shut down by even one small
lawsuit. The OSMF avoids this by being very conservative, and even
though local governments would love us to use their data, we still
require approval and licence blessing.

> It would be good to show them a working example. Has the
> BC2020i OSM data been integrated into the Ottawa Open Data Portal?  

Kind of the other way around: the Ottawa Open Data Portal data is in
OSM. Or at least, a massaged version is: address points have been moved
to building or lot centres in OSM. It was a decision that the Ottawa OSM
group made.

 Stewart



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