Data Science For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 22

Ten Phenomenal Resources for Open Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

Open data from government sources

Data from the World Bank

Private sources of open data

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 has been made publicly available and is permitted to be used, reused, built on, and shared with others. Open data is part of the open movement. Beyond open data, this aptly named 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 that derivative works can’t be copyrighted with a more ...