Law Commons^™

Towards Voluntary Interoperable Open Access Licenses For The Global Earth Observation System Of Systems (Geoss), Harlan Onsrud, James Campbell, Bastiaan Van Loenen

Harlan J Onsrud

Access to earth observation data has become critically important for the wellbeing of society. A major impediment to achieving widespread sharing of earth observation data is lack of an operational web-wide system that is transparent and consistent in allowing users to legally access and use the earth observations of others without seeking permission from data contributors or investigating terms of usage on a case-by-case basis. This article explores approaches to supplying a license-based system to overcome this impediment in the context of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. It discusses the benefits and drawbacks of the explored approaches and …

Creative Commons Licensing And Non-Creative Geographic Data, Harlan Onsrud

Harlan J Onsrud

Why does the scientific community need a simple method for letting each of us know that we are allowed legally to build on the work and data products of each other without asking permission? Does merely following the traditional practices of science and giving credit now make me a lawbreaker? What's the problem, how did we get here and what's the solution? Why does the solution for creative works not apply to geographic and other utilitarian data and databases? This presentation addresses these questions and approaches for arriving at solutions.

Open Science: Open Source Licences In Scientific Research, Andres Guadamuz

Andres Guadamuz

sometime even commercially successful systems. Amongst these models, one of the most interesting licenses is that offered by so-called copyleft licenses, which are licenses that allow software to be transferred with the insurance that the source code will remain open, with the caveat that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it.

However, software development is not the only area in which this licensing model could apply. The viral nature of copyleft licenses has generated a considerable amount of interest in circles that transcend software development. The idea …