David Fawcett

Bio: David Fawcett is the spatial database administrator and a Python hacker at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. He is a member of the team that built the Minnesota Geospatial Commons data portal, an open data advocate, and one of the organizers of Maptime MSP. David has been involved with open source geospatial projects for about 15 years. While working in a hybrid environment, he leans heavily on PostGIS, python, and the GDAL toolbox to get his work done. As a data producer and data consumer, it has become apparent that we need to move toward more simple, clear, and standard data licenses.

Open Data Licensing – Making It Clear

Deciding to publish your data as “Free and Open” is a very important and commendable first step, but there are other decisions and actions which can maximize the return on opening your data. Data is most valuable when the terms of its use are very clear. The adoption of standard, well known, open licenses makes it easy for data consumers to understand exactly what they can do with your data, and how they can combine it with data from other sources. / / We will explore several open licenses, and discuss the practical implications of different license requirements. This presentation isn't a prescription for one approach, but a discussion of best practices, real world examples, and the start of a conversation with data publishers and consumers.

open data, data licenses, policy, government, open government, transparency