Rename "Open Data Portal" to "Data Portal"

[akuckartz]

The decision regarding issue #3 will lead to the promotion of non-"Open" data on the platform. Therefore "Open" should be removed from the name.

The semantics of "Open" is quite well-defined in the context of data and software licenses.

The definition of "Open in Open Data, Open Content and Open Services" published by the Open Knowledge Foundation in the very first two paragraphs states:

"1. Access
The work shall be available ... at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. ..."

"2. Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the work either on its own or as part of a package made from works from many different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale or distribution."
http://opendefinition.org/okd/

The Open Source Definition states in its very first paragraph:

"The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale."
http://opensource.org/osd

[flowma]

Quick poll, what do people think: Does it make an Open Government Platform "not-open", if it hosts a /minority/ of closed data, provided that these are clearly marked as not-open? Btw. this applies to machine readability, too.

data.gov.uk for one hosts not-open data. But - true - they don't call themselves opendata.gov.uk, do they?

[fukami]

It's simply a misnomer if you call a plattform "open" when in fact it's not: "Mostly open" is very different from "open".

[gonium]

Either open or closed. There is no such thing as a little open when it comes to licenses, as the references of the issue opener show.

[jbspeakr]

open data means open in a technical and legal sense.
an so-called open-data portal providing non open data is in fact not an open-data portal but a fake.

[akuckartz]

Regarding technical openness:

I expect an Open Data portal to provide data which is technically open. But this is more difficult to implement because it can involve real effort. Maybe a small municipality wants to make an existing binary Microsoft Excel file (containing VB macros to make it more difficult) available using an open license but does not have the resources to convert it to an Open Document file. The Open Data Portal in that case should convert the file to an open format and only publish the converted file.

BTW: I do not consider Office Open XML to be an open format because it violates this condition:

"4. Absence of Technological Restriction

The work must be provided in such a form that there are no technological obstacles to the performance of the above activities. ..." (http://opendefinition.org/okd/)

The Open Office XML specification is far to complex (especially when compared to the Open Document Format) and therefore creates such technological obstacles.

[ghost]

Either you want to create a platform that simply gathers data, in which case you can use whatever license you like or you want to create data platform that is open, which means the decision how to make use of the information provided is the users to make.

"Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data

So the question imho is: Are you serious about open data or not?

[m-hoerz]

It appeared sarcastic as akuckartz suggested dropping the "Open", but now that's reality. Somewhat puzzling.

[mrtopf]

As greemin said: Are you serious about open data or not? If you are you'd drop not the name but non-open data from the site. Very disappointing move here by dropping the main claim from the name :-(

[akuckartz]

This issue can now be closed as fixed.

See this German article:
https://netzpolitik.org/2013/konsequent-kein-open-data-portal-im-bund/

(The debate certainly will not end with this development.)