➕Additional Licenses

Options for additional use of project data or applications beyond the core CC BY-NC-SA license.

We do not yet have a formal License decision in place and are not looking to extend any additiona licensing, but expect, based on the License choice, that may happen.

What this means is that the baseline License applies unless or until this section is updated and an additional license is granted.

If you have any questions about this, please Contact Us!

Why do we have a whole page to say we are not doing something?

• We want to adhere to as many of the open data principles as possible, but know that commercial use can create challenging incentives, such as competition or abuse.

• The People who power this project need to feel safe contributing information and not worry that it will somehow be used against them (for example, sharing contact information of government personnel so they can connect with other government personnel might also expose them to undesired outreach from commercial vendors).

• Much of the initiation of this project is based on hypotheses for which we need more data and feedback; starting with a more restrictive license and allowing additional options in the future protects the integrity of the work while we evaluate other opportunities.

What kinds of additional licenses might you consider in the future?

Great question! Here's what we are thinking right now:

• Grant free commercial licenses to DEF partners or sponsors as part of a partnership or sponsorship agreement (supporting DEF financially while limiting commercial use to groups already vetted under partnership or sponsorship agreements).

• Grant commercial licenses to vetted companies for a fee so that they can apply the crowdsourced knowledge to their businesses and activities while also supporting DEF and this project.

There are doubtless other applications we have yet to consider, so feel free to Contact Us if something else comes to mind!