Melanie Chernoff

1130 points
User profile image.
Raleigh, NC

Melanie Chernoff | As Public Policy Manager for Red Hat, Inc., Melanie monitors, evaluates, and works to influence U.S. and international legislation and government regulations affecting open source technologies and open standards. She also serves as chair of the company's Corporate Citizenship committee, coordinating Red Hat's charitable activities.

Open Source Champion Author Founding Member

Authored Comments

melanie
What "open data" means—and what it doesn’t

Hi Jacob,

I agree with you, and I did not mean to give the impression that only governments can have "open data." It's just that I focused on the government context because this is the government channel for opensource.com. Any entity, including a business, could release their data in an open fashion.

The term "open data," to me, simply means that data is released to the public without IP restrictions that would prevent use, copying, redistribution, etc. Anyone can open up their data.

I agree with you that even "open data" is sometimes released in a hard-to-access format. I don't think that would prevent it from being described as open, but as a practical matter, it's still a pain. I also would advocate for data being released in open, machine readable/searchable formats.

btw, here's a great interview with Tim Berners-Lee on this topic:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexander-howard/tim-bernerslee-on-wikilea_b_798671.html

melanie
What "open data" means—and what it doesn’t

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for the correction. I've updated the post.

Yes, feel free to cross-post. Unless otherwise stated, all opensource.com is licensed under Creative Commons' CC-BY-SA license, so you don't have to ask.

thx,
mel