Hatlas licensing, pt1

I’ve gotten some great feedback from Fedora contributors on this POC so far, for which I’m extremely grateful.

Many of the concerns raised thus far are about user privacy and data licensing. I’m anticipating that since this data has historically been available only to those willing to run large databases at home, most Fedorans are unaware of what data is being collected and published about their activities. I’ve been holding off on “big bang” pubilc accouncements while I try to get answers lined up for people when they start asking why I am publishing this data, because I am not publishing this data – I’m republishing this data.

It turns out that there is no clear answer to many of these questions. There are no clear declarations made about what licenses Fedora puts on its data, and the Fedora Privacy Statement is a bit vague and occasionally inconsistent with how it addresses the questions of what data is collected and what data is shared.

Members of the Fedora Council have suggested that the license is likely extremely permissive, and I’ve been assured that Hatlas is certainly not running afoul of any Fedoran legalities, so I have a green light to continue for now.

I’ve sent a letter to Fedora’s legal advisors asking for clarification on the current Fedora policies, so that I can “tap the sign” when the time comes. I’ll keep this space updated as that conversation evolves.

Hatlas licensing #

Since the lack of a license is a glaring omission, I wanted to address that by putting a license on Hatlas data, which means I have to pick one.

I’m generally in favor of highly permissive licenses, and much of my code is made available via MIT. However, some in the community raised concerns that the current modus operandi of authoritarian regimes is to skirt the legalities that outlaw spying on their citizens by having corporations ingest all the data and then license the analyses to the government. To ease those concerns, I’ve decided to select a Non-Commercial license.

I was unable to find a good “data-specific” license in line with CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so at least for now, all data made available here is licensed as such.

If any in the community have suggestions on this topic, please reach out. Otherwise, I’ll update here as we gain clarity.