Linux Foundation debuts Community Data License Agreement

The Linux Foundation has announced a pair of licenses for data that are modeled on the two broad categories of free-software licenses: permissive and copyleft. The Community Data License Agreement (CDLA) comes in two flavors: Sharing that "encourages contributions of data back to the data community" and Permissive that allows the data to be used without any further requirements."Inspired by the collaborative software development models of open source software, the CDLA licenses are designed to enable individuals and organizations of all types to share data as easily as they currently share open source software code. Soundly drafted licensing models can help people form communities to assemble, curate and maintain vast amounts of data, measured in petabytes and exabytes, to bring new value to communities of all types, to build new business opportunities and to power new applications that promise to enhance safety and services.The growth of big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has allowed people to extract unprecedented levels of insight from data. Now the challenge is to assemble the critical mass of data for those tools to analyze. The CDLA licenses are designed to help governments, academic institutions, businesses and other organizations open up and share data, with the goal of creating communities that curate and share data openly."