Data Science For Dummies

Chapter 22

Ten Phenomenal Resources for Open Data

In This Chapter

Pulling open data from government sources

Getting familiar with data from the World Bank

Peeking into private sources of open data

Opening up the world of open spatial data

Open data is part of a larger trend toward a less restrictive, more open understanding of the idea of intellectual property, a trend that’s been gaining tremendous popularity over the past decade. Open data is data that’s been made publically available and that’s permitted to be used, reused, built upon, and shared with others. Open data is part of the open movement. Beyond open data, this so-called open movement also includes open-source software, open hardware, open-content creative work, open access to scientific journals, and open science — all committed to the notion that content (including raw data from experiments) should be shared freely.

The distinguishing feature of open licenses is that they have copyleft instead of copyright. With copyleft, the only restriction is that the source of the work must be identified, sometimes with the caveat ...