TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData/DataLicensing
Linking Open Data Community Effort
Data Licensing
In order to enable people to use the data that you are publishing on the Web on a secure legal basis, you need to explicitly state which license applies to your data. If no license is specified, people cannot use your data within any serious applications.
Thus, this page collects information about
- data licenses that you can use for your data.
- best practices on how to annotate your data with licensing meta-information.
The page is part of the community project SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData
Licenses
- Open Data Commons Attribution License Attribution for Data/Databases.
- Open Database License (ODbL) Attribution and Share-Alike for Data/Databases.
- Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) The PDDL places the data(base) in the public domain (waiving all rights).
- Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Waiver for placing the data(base) in the public domain (waiving all rights). Please note that other Creative Commons licenses should not be used for data as data is not considered creative works in many legal frameworks.
Best practices for annotating data with licensing information
- Applying Licenses and Waivers to Linked Data. Article by Tom Heath in Nodalities, Issue 10, 2009.
- How to publish Linked Data Tutorial Section: What should I return as RDF description for a URI?
- Describing Copyright in RDF Guide to using the Creative Commons vocabulary for describing licenses, what they permit and what they forbid
Websites about Data Licensing
Papers and articles about Data Licensing
- Open Knowledge Foundation: Guide to Open Data Licensing
- Paul Miller, Rob Styles, Tom Heath: Open Data Commons, a license for open data, LDOW workshop 2008.
- Kaitlin Thaney: Sharing Data on the Web
- See also Section Licenses, Waivers and Norms for Data in Linked Data book.
Related Workshops and Events
People Interested in the Area
- Tom Heath
- Chris Bizer
- Egon Willighagen
- Ted Thibodeau
