Define controlled vocabulary for dct:license

[Juan-Juan-1]

Since usage conditions (Nutzungsbedingungen, Lizenzen) are so important, we will propose a controlled vocabulary for dct:license. Important inspiration sources may be http://dcat-ap.de/def/licenses and Chapter 5.4 "Licence vocabularies" from DCAT-AP.

A first draft was elaborated: https://www.dcat-ap.ch/vocabulary/licenses

Business rules, like for instance "actors of the federal level should only use terms of use", can be defined where needed.

[metaodi]

We should include the "openess" of the license as a property (just like https://www.dcat-ap.de/def/licenses/ does) so that we can finally define which those licenses conforms to the open definition and which do not (looking at you 😈 http://dcat-ap.ch/vocabulary/licenses/terms_ask 😈)

[sabinem]

@metaodi That is a very good idea.

I looked at how its is done by DCAT-AP DE: They use: https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/#http://purl.org/dc/terms/type for this but not with a controlled vocabulary, even though in the link above the recommendation is to use a controlled vocabulary for dct:type.

<http://dcat-ap.de/def/licenses/cc-zero>
  a skos:Concept ;
  ...
  dct:type "Freie Nutzung" .

If we would go that way: should we then establish a controlled vocabulary for the licence type, so that it can be better understood what the terms "Freie Nutzung", etc really means?

Another option, that I see, would be to map the international licenses to the Swiss licenses:

<http://dcat-ap.de/def/licenses/cc-zero>
  a skos:Concept ;
  ...
  skos:exactMatch <http://dcat-ap.ch/vocabulary/licenses/terms_open> .

Would this the be a skos:exactMatch or a skos:closeMatch?

[Juan-Juan-1]

@metaodi @sabinem The idea of "grading" licenses seems interesting to me - but what's the goal, to discourage the use of "ask" or to offer guidance to the data user? Another scenario (not my favourite - should be still be considered) would be to exclude at least middle term "ask"...

"mapping international licenses to the Swiss licenses" is in my opinion not an option, since what we have right now on opendata.swiss are simply not licenses. As as a public administration (I speak now for the federal level) we are not allowed to license data - so we communicate they are usable as (at least partially :) ) open data by using these terms of use. Maybe it would be more correct to use "dct:rights" to communicate these terms of use, but we just decided to use dct:license instead for the sake of understandability and also because that field is defined in a loose enough manner ("A legal document giving official permission to do something with a Resource").

I think it'll be important to get the opinion of the OGD Secretary @FSO here.

[p1d1d1]

FYI, terms of use of opendata.swiss are available as Linked Data here: https://ld.admin.ch/definedTerm/TermsOfUse

[l00mi]

Thanks @p1d1d1 but this is an old reference, the final position for now, as internationally for most controlled vocabulary are at https://ld.admin.ch/vocabulary/TermsOfUse