odd technical/legal categorizations of index criteria

[mlinksva]

http://index.okfn.org/methodology/ says

Each dataset in each place is evaluated using nine questions that examine the technical and the legal openness of the dataset. In order to balance between the two aspects, each question is weighted differently and worth a different score. Together, the six technical questions are worth 50 points, the three legal questions are also worth 50 points.

The following questions examine technical openness:

• Does the data exist?
• Is the data in digital form?
• Is the data available online?
• Is the data machine-readable?
• Is it available in bulk?
• Is the data provided on a timely and up to date basis?

The following questions examine the legal status of openness:

• Is the data publicly available?
• Is the data available for free?
• Is the data openly licensed?

Not clear to me how public availability and price are legal statuses.

Also not clear how some of the technical criteria are...technical.

Except for possibly the licensing and machine-readability criteria, the technical/legal distinction seems artificial and arbitrary.

I'd consider eliminating the distinction. If the 3 currently categorized as 'legal' criteria are worth half the score, it should because they are worth that, not because of an arbitrary and odd assignment into legal, and same for the ones currently assigned to technical.

[Stephen-Gates]

agree

[morchickit]

Can we move this out of the github issue to the mailing list/discuss forum
so we can have more comments on this from people who are not on the Github?
On May 24, 2015 1:14 AM, "Stephen Gates" notifications@github.com wrote:

agree

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#91 (comment).

[Stephen-Gates]

Done https://discuss.okfn.org/t/odd-technical-legal-categorizations-of-index-criteria/324/1

[pwalsh]

Now in forum.