<div dir="ltr">Hi Rob,<br><br>Good points - comments/questions inline...<br><br>On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Rob Atkinson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:robatkinson101@gmail.com">robatkinson101@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">1) There should be a general position regarding accountability, like<br>
the intention (but not current practice!) of FOI laws, that taxpayer<br>
funded activities should support free and open access for<br>
non-commercial use to relevant information. This includes all spatial<br>
information, with the well understood exceptions of personal private<br>
details and national security. Specifically there should be a<br>
presumption of public interest, <b>with only commercial exploitation<br>
restricted.</b></blockquote><div><br>What do you mean by commercial exploitation here? If BigCo wants to resell free and publicly accessible data for $100K per user per year and can find suckers to sign up for that, whats the problem?<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">2) There should not be a technical cost associated in accessing data -<br>
i.e. it should not be bound to a proprietary on in-house custom<br>
technology. FOSS has an obvious role in providing a baseline for what<br>
is thus acceptable - there should be an onus on data access methods to<br>
provide a FOSS reference implementation, and this should apply<br>
automatically. Critically we mustnt contemplate building private data<br>
distribution arrangements without a commensurate capability to make<br>
the same data visible and accessible using open standards and<br>
licenses.</blockquote><div><br>Standards are the key things here imo, if the data is available in standard formats or through standard service interfaces then it doesn't matter what software is in use to deliver it. Whether governments should be using/preferring Open Source Software is a different topic from providing open access to public information. I'd much prefer data released today in any format, than in five years via a standard format. Governments (and all of us) should be striving to push standards but getting data out there is more important than getting it in the "right" form.<br>
</div>Looks like Victoria is heading in healthy directions though :)<br></div><br>Other Rob.<br><br>
</div>