To Share or to Share-alike? CIPPIC Releases Report on Share-alike Licenses in City Open Data Portals

Municipalities create and own a valuable set of data.  This data ranges from bike lane maps to trash collection schedules to city financial statements. Over the past few years, many Canadian municipalities have setup “open data portals” to release this data to the public.  This increases the effective use of the data by allowing citizens to retrieve, view, and re-use city information.

All city open data portals require users to agree to the terms of a license. Unfortunately, many of these licenses fall short of making the data truly "open" and reusable.  This report focuses on one problematic restriction: the “share-alike” obligation.  Although share-alike can serve a useful purpose in some contexts, it does not fit well with municipal open data portals.

Read the full report here.