Scottish Parliament Open Licence Version 2.0

Open Definition
1

I would like to submit the Scottish Parliamentary Open Licence for discussion so it can be checked for conformance against the Open Definition and hence listed on the Conformant Licenses page on the Open Definition website. In accordance with submission process:

  1. Link to the full text
    http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Fol/OpenScottishParliamentLicence.pdf

  2. Rationale for the new licence
    Under UK copyright law, the Parliaments in the devolved administrations (i.e. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) together with the Parliament in London, have their own copyright: Parliamentary copyright. This licence is to enable users to use and reuse Scottish Parliamentary works freely.

  3. Licensor
    The licensor for all material covered by this licence will be the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, who are responsible for the administration of the Scottish Parliament.

  4. Comparison to OD Conformant licence
    The Scottish Parliament Open Licence Version 2.0 is modelled on the Open Government Licence Version 3.0.

  5. Benefits of the Scottish Parliament Open Licence Version 2.0
    The Scottish Parliamentary Open Licence is unique to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body will always be the licensor, therefore the OSPL only applies to their information and there will not be multiple information providers.

  6. Compatibility to conformant licences
    The Scottish Parliamentary Open Licence is compatible with CC BY 4.0 and OGL 3.0.

Thank you for considering this proposal.

James

1 Like
2

These questions probably don’t bear on conformance but might indicate a need for slightly more pointed submission questions in the future.

1: There presumably is a 1.0 of this license. Is it still on the web? This one’s URL (lacking indication of version) does not give me confidence that it will continue to be available. Given that people will be relying on licenses for the nearly unlimited duration of copyright, it’s especially important for licenses to have cool URIs.

2-5: I’d like to ask explicitly why an existing license can’t be used. Or why an existing license can’t be generalized to this use with a new version? Can we expect 4 different parliamentary licenses?

6: Question not fully answered. The answer is surely by alignment. But “Aligned with” in the license is ambiguous. Alignment happens due to terms of licenses matching. If an explicit statement is to be made in the license, the UK OGL 3.0 is much better, explicitly stating compatibility and its meaning.