3 thoughts on “4 Stars for Metadata: an Open Ranking System for Library, Archive, and Museum Collection Metadata”

  1. I sometimes feel like I’m the only person in the world who defines ‘open access’ as non-commercial access. I honestly don’t get how people think charging for a resource somehow makes it ‘more free’, and I’m pretty sure there’s a sizeable foundation-type lobby making sure that the ‘open-as-commercial’ perspective holds sway. Well, I haven’t drunk the commercialism Kool-Aid, and consequently, I reject the proposal coming forth from the so-called ‘LOD-LAM Summit’ to create a 4-star definition of openness. If you can block access to something and demand payment for it, it’s not open. It is certainly not ‘more open’ than the non-commercial form of openness that most people actually want to use.

  2. MacKenzie, this is an interesting model for illustrating ongoing discussions about sharing and licensing – thank you for presenting it so clearly.

    Stephen, I have read your posts on this topic for years, and appreciate your interest in sharing knowledge and education. While I don’t sympathize with your fondness for ‘non-commercial’ licenses,I can follow your reasoning. But this conspiracy theory version of your view goes too far. Please assume good faith of those who disagree with you, and be moderate in assumptions about what “most people” want. No lobby is required to make people view public domain as the ‘most free’ license — it is, by many rules of thumb.

    I cannot speak for most people, but in the communities I frequent – where highly distributed or multi-contributor reuse and derivative use are common – the problems with ‘NC’ restrictions, or any restriction beyond simple attribution, are well known. Metadata is the sort of knowledge that lends itself naturally to repeated revision, clarification, and expansion over time. I don’t think such data should be placed under copyright at all, and hope that placing it into the public domain becomes standard practice.

  3. Stephen Downes: Restricting data to non-commercial use doesn’t make it more free. If the data is public domain, who cares if someone is including it in a published book that costs money? You can always get the data for free on the internet. By restricting use to non-commercial, however, you are effectively limiting the data to only be used on the internet since every other use costs money which needs to be recouped.

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