ODC Open Database License (ODbL) Release Candidate 2 is Out

Open Data Commons, a project we help host and run, has put out its second and final “Release Candidate” of the Open Database License (ODbL).

As it states in the announcement:

The Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0 “Release Candidate 2” is now available at:

http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/

As expected there haven’t been many changes from the first Release Candidate. The two main alterations are:

Removal of section 4.7 related to reverse engineering. This may be reintroduced in later versions but has been left out here in order to remove any possible concerns about license compatibility on Produced Works.

Explicit statement that derivative databases used in the creation of Publicly Available Produced Works are also subject to share-alike.

With the completion of this second round of comments we believe this text is now in final “1.0” form. In order to allow interested individuals and communities time to review the latest set of changes, as well as to provide an opportunity to catch any last minute “bugs” we are going to provide a one final, brief, comment period closing on Friday 19th of June at 1200GMT. Full details on how to comment can be found on the ODbL home page.

In preparation for the 1.0 release we have also continued to improve the FAQs as well as providing a new open data guide. Any feedback on these is also very welcome.