San Francisco, 20 April 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

The US firm SimpleGeo has announced it will open up the data that it holds as open data, and provide it under a Creative Commons Zero license (CC0).

This is a good example of corporate entities opening up data in response to governments setting an example in making data available for re-use to the public. A recent article by Nigel Shadbolt called upon companies to open data up, and thus create a wider open data ecosystem, as well as a way forward for new products and services.

In this case the US company SimpleGeo provides services around geolocation, such as contextual information around coordinates, or points of interest at a certain location. For its product SimpleGeo Places it has decided to open up its data under CC0 licensing.

In the company blog the decision is explained, clarifying the statement on re-use of data on their site (emphasis added):

"We view SimpleGeo as a services company, not a data company. We want to build the best services possible for developers, but data is a major underlying portion of that. With this contribution to the community, we hope to see the data get better for everyone.

Any contributions from the community or data that SimpleGeo creates will always be CC0. In the interest of providing the best quality Places API, SimpleGeo may offer additional data from third-parties under other licenses, but we will always offer our own data openly."