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Deutsch: Britische Regierung will Open Data Lizenz einführen

A perpetual, royalty-free licence called Open Government Licence (OGL) allowing the re-use of Governmental and public information will be introduced by the UK Government.

"The Government grants a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual and non-exclusive licence under the conditions laid out in the OGL. The OGL governs the re-use of public sector information, including material produced by government departments, Parliaments, agencies, local authorities and Trading Funds, but excludes personal data," is the government's statement.

According to the National Archives the licence will replace the present Click-Use Licence and will also cover Crown Copyright, databases and source codes. Moreover, OGL will not require the registration of users or a formal application to get permission to re-use data.

The licence is meant to make governmental activities more transparent and to enable and encourage the civil society and private sector to re-use this information, assisting them in promoting creative and innovative activities. It will be machine readable and therefore flexible, being able to work in parallel with other licensing models recognised internationally such as Creative Commons.

"We believe (transparency) is the best way for the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account, encourage innovation and deliver better value for money in public spending," said Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office.

The types of information to be used and re-used will cover "non-personal information collected and produced by government and the public sector, including works subject to copyright and database right (much of this information will be accessible on public sector web sites or already published by the public sector), previously unpublished datasets released by the public sector on portals, such as data.gov.uk and original and open source software and source code."

The Government has also issued a framework governing the use of the licence by Government departments and other public bodies.

"The UK Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF) provides a policy and legal overview for licensing the re-use of public sector information both in central government and the wider public sector. It sets out best practice, standardises the licensing principles for government information and recommends the use of the UK Open Government Licence (OGL) for public sector information."

The framework makes it compulsory for central Government departments and agencies to use the OGL for their freely available public information and is intended to meet the needs and interests of community groups and social organisations, the information re-user community in the private sector and civil society and the public data developer community.

Government publishes open data license (7.10.2010)
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=11426

UK Government Licensing Framework for public sector information
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/uk-government-licensing-f...

EDRi-gram: New governmental usage of open licenses in the Netherlands and UK (7.04.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.7/open-content-government-uk-neth...