Thank you for clarifying this, @marado!
I was partly wondering because I assumed that some governments might license data (with good intentions) that is already published in public domain and thought that this might restrict the use of data or at least cause more confusion for users (given that the terms of a licence might contradict the public domain status). But this seems clear now.
Also, relating to another thread in this forum, I’m wondering 1) if measurements like the Global Open Data Index should acknowledge and better highlight public domain status and give less emphasis to open licensing per se, 2) how we can evaluate and validate the “open status” of gov data in different countries even if it is not stated as such through an open licence or a disclaimer (e.g. by linking to copyright laws or statements of public domain status, terms of use, or similar texts).
I’m trying to disentangle open licensing from public domain status in my head, and to clarify whether we should, and how we can evaluate more coherently the public domain status if open licences are absent (be it through disclaimers or other texts).
Maybe you or someone else in this forum has an opinion to this (since it didn’t seem to be fully clarified in the thread I linked above)?