Open source software and open data Open licensing of software and data for public policy analysis and for collaborative research Online presentation to Seminar – Introduction to Software Licensing in Europe • Chair of Civil Law, Technology, and IT Law • Humboldt University • Berlin, Germany 10 February 2021 Robbie Morrison • Berlin, Germany Copyright (c) 2021 Robbie Morrison <[email protected]> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC‑BY‑4.0) License Release 03 • 12 February 2021 Scene setting ● European focus: – database protection under Database Directive 96/9/EC ● source code for research and for public policy analysis ● numerical data that is public and non‑personal, therefore: – exclude privately‑held data, including consortium data and brokered data – exclude personal data and therefore allied privacy issues ● examples from energy system analysis and related public interest goals: – net‑zero carbon by 2050 or earlier (non‑negotiable and based on available budgets) – accessible and reliable – nature protection 2 Two revolutions ● open source software – estimates of 90% – partly facilitated by the cloud: software as a service (SaaS) – large software stacks: challenge of software license identification and compliance – quality through development: bug‑fixes, refactoring, testing, user‑base feedback ● data "tsunami" – mostly facilitated by advances in computer science and hardware – data needs curation: one model is community curation – provenance counts: difficult to recover lost quality – data versioning at scale remains a research question – primary data versus processed data 3 Simple code example ● source code (explicitly compiled language because the steps are distinct) – hello.cc // SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021 Robbie Morrison <[email protected]> // SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0 #include <iostream> int main() { std::cout << "Hello, world!" << std::endl; } ● compiled software (build and test steps omitted) – hello.exe – which you can distribute under the GPL–3.0 license – notwithstanding, the example shown is too short to attract copyright protection – more information under FSFE REUSE initiative: https://reuse.software 4 Data example Figure SPM.1.a from IPCC SR15 Masson-Delmotte, Valérie, Panmao Zhai, Hans-Otto Pörtner, Debra Roberts, Jim Skea, Priyadarshi R Shukla, Anna Pirani, Wilfran Moufouma-Okia, Clotilde Péan, Roz Pidcock, Sarah Connors, JB Robin Matthews, Yang Chen, Xiao Zhou, Melissa I Gomis, Elisabeth Lonnoy, Tom Maycock, Melinda Tignor, and Tim Waterfield (editors) (2018). Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas weather and satellite data is nonetheless run through emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. Geneva, 5 powerful climate models to produce the displayed results Switzerland: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Energy system modeling ● computer simulations – no graphical interface – often backcast from some future desired state – necessarily scenario‑based (forecasts not possible) – embed constraints (demand is covered, climate protection goals, limits on technology uptake, land availability) – embed feedbacks (cost reductions from deployment) – usually contain explicit management objectives (least incremental short‑run cost or least long‑run cost) – essentially report a sequence of decisions (concerning operations, investments, and technology choices) – increasing interest from policymakers ● various modeling paradigms – interdisciplinary: engineering, microeconomics, optimization, public policy, decision science, climate science, land use – integrated assessment models to 2100 (which often select carbon capture technologies after 2050) – energy system models to 2050 (technology rich, solved sequentially or as entire horizon) – next-steps models (also used for utility planning) – hybrid models with private decision‑taking (bounded rationality, social physics) 6 Another revolution domain‑wide cooperation on data ● once research artifacts are freely usable and reusable, researchers can start cooperating on shared agendas: – data semantics: ● domain ontology (highly formal representation of concepts and relationships) ● standardized terminology (derives from above) ● metadata standards – technical standards: ● data storage and interchange (low‑level protocols) ● data‑centric tooling (high‑level schemas) – data portals: ● funded curation and community curation ● work on linked open data (LOD) concepts to federate databases dispersed across the web – standardized scenarios: ● common reporting ● cross‑model comparisons (vitally important for confidence) 7 Legal contexts European Union United States software patents rejected yes database protection Directive 96/9/EC unlikely injunctions against intermediaries problematic ● competition law and law of civil wrongs and doctrines like misappropriation may apply ● data covered by personal privacy omitted from this discussion ● concerted effort by European Commission to develop a new industrial data right (IDR) possibly shelved d e d n Anon (24 January 2020). e m B2 — Analytical report on EU law applicable to sharing of non-personal data — V2.0. m o Capgemini Invent, Fraunhofer FOCUS, Timelex, Support Centre for Data Sharing. Report for c e r DG Connect (DG = European Union Directorate-General). Husovec, Martin (November 2017). Injunctions against intermediaries in the European Union: accountable but not liable. 8 Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-41506-4. doi:10.1017/9781108227421. Database Directive 96/9/EC Covers European Economic Area (EEA) ● legal definition of a "database" is very broad: – includes printed maps ● a database is protected where both the: – direct investment is substantial – extraction is substantial – the substantiality principle derives from copyright law ● directive intended to support a database industry in Europe – instead material gets harvested and used to stock US servers – creates legal uncertainty for risk‑averse researchers in the absence of suitable open licenses Davidson, Mark J (January 2008). The legal protection of databases. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-04945-0. Paperback edition. 9 US Copyright Office (2017) "The notion of technical databases being creative is largely mutually exclusive. Orthodox database are highly structured, but they are not much selected and arranged. Nonorthodox databases, while not highly structured, are similarly even less likely to be selected and arranged." §727 US Copyright Office (November 2017). The Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices — Third edition: Chapter 700. US Government. 10 German copyright definitions Urheberrechtsgesetz (UrhG) (Deutschland) UML (unified modeling language) class diagram 11 privately‑held data public data 12 may also be of public interest general data not covered subject to statutory reporting high transactions costs consortium data portals being replaced by more nuanced brokered data data usage attributes are tagged by the provider European legislation silent on licensing choice of license issue proposed: CC‑BY‑4.0 or CC0‑1.0 (or something inbound compatible) must have competition value although some may be statutory reporting legally siloed widely usable and reusable trade secret private data negotiated bilateralagreements consortium data brokered data → Open/closed spectrum with open licenses (to provide certainty, particularly Europe)in open data on public interest grounds data disclosureunder may involve commercial or personal privacy some public policy support for sharing non-open data shared data non-revealed data Touchstone definitions Touchstone definitions for "open data", one community and one statutory Open Knowledge Foundation (no date). Open Definition 2.1 — Defining open in open data, open content and open knowledge. Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF). Cambridge, United Kingdom. European Commission (26 June 2019). "Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and the re-use of public sector information — PE/28/2019/REV/1" Official Journal of the European Union. L 172: 56–83. The directive entered into force on 16 July 2019. Recital 16 (page 58) begins: "Open data as a concept is generally understood to denote data in an open format that can be freely used, re-used and shared by anyone for any purpose." See also: Morrison, Robbie and contributors (22 February 2019). Definitions for open. openmod forum. Germany. 13 Open data licenses License compatibility graph 14 Code/data landscape 15 Open data licenses my personal picks, others might add ODC ODbL–1.0 Creative Commons CC–BY–4.0 – introduced 25 November 2013 – first data‑capable license (that deals with the Database Directive) – requires attribution and attribution tracking – material may be modified or mixed and licensed under more restrictive terms but the attribution requirement must remain Creative Commons CC0–1.0 – public domain dedication – falls back to maximally permissive license in civil law jurisdictions like those in Europe – no legal obligations for users – metadata should always be licensed CC0–1.0 in most case, open data licenses do not provide permission, rather they offer certainty 16 Statutory reporting Information under mandate to be published for