[This blog post was posted as a guest post at the Open Knowledge Foundation Blog on April 12]

The Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration and Reform have just sent a draft version of a new Norwegian Licence for Open Data (NLOD) on a formal hearing here in Norway (the hearing documents (in Norwegian), and a blog post about the licence and the hearing (also in Norwegian)). After the hearing, we intend to recommend all government agencies in Norway to use this licence when they publish data.

Government agencies publishing data are not always very good at specifying the terms under which the information can be reused. In Norway, at least, the introduction of a new sui generis licence for each new data set has become a predictable exercise. This is confusing to the reuser, adding an uneccessary layer of uncertainty, and, in some cases, even impeding legitimate reuse.

The Ministry has therefore decided to establish one common licence. This will reduce the number of open data licences in Norway (one licence to rule them all). The licence is a rather straightforward attribution licence under Norwegian law. Its main purpose is to enable reuse in Norway, but to make sure data under NLOD can be combined with other data as well as reused internationally, the licence states clearly that it is compatible with Open Government Licence (v1.0), Creative Commons Attribution Licence (generic v1.0, v2.0, v2.5 and unported v3.0), and Open Data Commons Attribution Licence (v 1.0).

The most important details in the licence are the following:

• Personal data is not covered by the licence. This is the same as in Open Government Licence.
• The reuser cannot distort the information or use the information to mislead. The NLOD definition of this seems to be less restrictive than the definition used in Open Government Licence.
• NLOD specifies that the licencor can provide more information on the quality or delivery of data, but that this kind of information is outside the scope of the licence. NLOD only covers the rights to use the information.
• Information licenced under NLOD will also be licenced under future versions of the licence, provided that the licensor has not explicitly licenced information under v1.0. This gives the Norwegian Government more sway over public sector information, and reduces the chances of data ending up as a kind of orphan works in the future.

What do you think?

[For comments, please go to the guest post at the Open Knowledge Foundation Blog]