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Does Open Data Need to Be the Next Open Source?

posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 18 2015, @06:51PM   
from the data-is-power dept.

sigma writes:

Large datasets and predictive analytics software are a fertile field for innovation, but while excellent open source tools like Sci-Py, R, etc are freely available, the datasets are not. A Computerworld article notes that the scarcity of large publicly available data collections has led to a database released for a competition by Netflix half a decade ago now being constantly used in computer science research.

Australia's government does provide an easy way to find, access and reuse some public datasets, but most public and private databases are silo-ed away from experimenters. The Open Data Handbook offers some guidelines for defining openness in data, but offers little in ways to drive organisations to make their datasets available.

So do we need a GPL for data, and if so, what would it look like?

• Re:start by defining what an open dataset is Re:start by defining what an open dataset is (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday March 18 2015, @07:39PM

  by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday March 18 2015, @07:39PM (#159555) Journal

  Human readable in its raw form may be hard for really large datasets. But one can document the format properly. And including the original dataset may be quite unpractical.

  Some governments also publish datasets freely.

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• Re:start by defining what an open dataset is (Score: 2, Disagree) by TLA on Wednesday March 18 2015, @07:46PM

  by TLA (5128) on Wednesday March 18 2015, @07:46PM (#159562) Journal

  that's why I qualified it with "...where practical". :)

  --
  Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander

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