Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 30, 2007 07:13 PM
It's sweet of them to use Linux, but what about the data? Is it being stored in open formats with freely available specifications that anybody can impliment without having to pay royalities? I followed a few links and while I found some PR speak that sounds pretty good, I found no specifics regards this question. If they were a private institution working with their own data they could do as they like. Because they're paid with tax dollars and archiving what, sooner or later, is the public's data we've a right to have that data in an open format.
I hope they fufill their 'publicly downloadable in bulk' promise. The <a href="http://www.openarchives.org/documents/FAQ.html#What%20do%20you%20mean%20by%20%22Open%22?" title="openarchives.org">Open Archives Initiative FAQ</a openarchives.org> (an affiliated organization) says "any advocate of “free” information recognize that it is eminently reasonable to restrict<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... defamatory misuse of information". That seems a strange thing to put into a FAQ. Let's hope they leave it to the courts to decide what's "defamatory misuse".
Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux help
That's all very sweet, but what about the data?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 30, 2007 07:13 PMIt's sweet of them to use Linux, but what about the data? Is it being stored in open formats with freely available specifications that anybody can impliment without having to pay royalities? I followed a few links and while I found some PR speak that sounds pretty good, I found no specifics regards this question. If they were a private institution working with their own data they could do as they like. Because they're paid with tax dollars and archiving what, sooner or later, is the public's data we've a right to have that data in an open format.
I hope they fufill their 'publicly downloadable in bulk' promise. The <a href="http://www.openarchives.org/documents/FAQ.html#What%20do%20you%20mean%20by%20%22Open%22?" title="openarchives.org">Open Archives Initiative FAQ</a openarchives.org> (an affiliated organization) says "any advocate of “free” information recognize that it is eminently reasonable to restrict<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... defamatory misuse of information". That seems a strange thing to put into a FAQ. Let's hope they leave it to the courts to decide what's "defamatory misuse".
Karl O. Pinc
kop@meme.com
#