Aiding the discovery and development of digital public goods is at the core of everything we do. Which is why we are excited to announce that this week we launched a beta version of DPG Resources, a collection of resources that will support projects on their journey to becoming a digital public good. This is a beta version of the project, so we are actively seeking additional resources to include. If you are aware of any additional resources, please share them via this form. 

In order to become a digital public good, a project must meet the DPG Standard. The DPG Standard is a set of 9 indicators that were developed by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) to operationalise the definition of digital public goods set by the UN Secretary-General in the 2020 Roadmap for Digital Cooperation. Indicators range from open source licensing to relevance to the Sustainable Development Goals. You can read more about the creation of the DPG Standard here. 

DPG Resources aims to become a curated collection of publicly available tools that can help projects meet and surpass the minimum standard. Meeting this minimum standard will increase the discoverability of a project and consequently its ability to make sustainable impact through reuse and adaptation. Going beyond the minimum standard enables projects to embrace the full potential of open source. For this reason, the DPG Resources collection includes resources to help projects go even deeper on areas such as documentation, community development, and child online protection. 

DPG Resources draws on efforts by other prominent open-source stakeholders including GitHub, Linux Foundation, Open Source Initiative (OSI), and many more. By bringing together resources from across the open source community, we seek to highlight the important work that has already been documented, and to provide relevant resources that can help a project maximise their impact. 

Throughout the nomination process, projects are asked to demonstrate their compliance to the indicators in the DPG Standard. Therefore, the navigation of the DPG Resources site includes categorisation based on these indicators and will be built upon over time. DPG Resources also includes an FAQ section that helps individuals navigate the nomination process. 

Feedback on the beta version 

We want to make sure we are providing the tools and resources that are the most useful to projects during the nomination phase. In the spirit of open source, the DPG Resources platform is launching in beta, and asking you to help provide feedback through observation, conversation, and co-creation. Receiving feedback from users as we build, test, and adjust our beta version will help make sure we are supporting projects with the most relevant resources. All feedback or questions regarding this platform are warmly welcomed and much appreciated. Your thoughts on how we can improve can easily be provided through this form.

This is just the beginning

The resources currently available on the DPG Resources site are just the beginning. We want to be constantly evolving by providing new content and links as frequently as possible. If you know of resources that could be relevant to projects working to become digital public goods, you can suggest them by using this submission form.

If you know a project that could qualify as a digital public good, please consider nominating them. 

Have a question about a nominated project? Please reach out to nominations@digitalpublicgoods.net.

To learn more about the Digital Public Goods Alliance:
Join our mailing list.
Follow us on Twitter @DPGAlliance.

However, the process of identifying which “approved” licenses to include in the DPG Standard was, and continues to be, the result of a complex series of debates and discussions. The aim of this post is to share some of that discussion and the thinking behind the licenses that appear in the DPG Standard today. This will provide context for those considering submitting an openly licensed project to the DPG Registry, as well as for projects who are choosing an open license for the first time.

At present, the DPG Standard’s second indicator reads:

By design, open source software licenses promote collaboration and sharing because they permit others to make modifications to source code and incorporate those changes into their own projects. They also encourage others to access, view, and modify open source software to build solutions for their own purpose. Read more about why we require DPGs to be open source in our previous blog.

Licensing Content

For Open Content we require the use of a Creative Commons license and encourage projects to use a license which allows for both derivatives and commercial reuse (CC-BY and CC-BY-SA), or the ability to dedicate content to the public domain (CC0).

When choosing which licenses to include in the DPG Standard for content, we took into account key considerations. For example, we allow the Creative Commons NonCommercial (NC) clause for content and data, but not the No-Derivatives (ND) clause. This decision was made because ND licenses put restrictions on reuse and adaptation. For example, for content that is under a ND license, translation is not allowed. A NonCommercial license allows for reuse and adaptation as long as it is not for commercial purposes. While this does limit the opportunity for commercial scalability models, we took into consideration that many stakeholders will still be able to benefit from reusing and adapting content that cannot be commercially reused. Furthermore, this increases supply, as many who have invested heavily in content creation will be more willing to use open licensing if they can apply a NC clause. 

Licensing Software

For software we chose to accept the Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved licenses not only because these licenses are widely accepted, but because they have all been vetted against the OSI definition of open source. The Open Source Definition is a list of ten clearly defined requirements for a license to be recognized as open source. The distribution terms of any software with OSI-approved licenses must comply with the Open Source Definition. Additionally, the vetted licenses undergo a review by the open source legal community. This rigorous process helps to filter out ambiguous or vague licenses that don’t explicitly comply with the requirements. However, the OSI license list is also quite long and only a few of these licenses are used in practice. 

Licensing Data 

The Open Knowledge Foundation has in its open definition requirements for open data in much the same way OSI does for software, including a definition and a list of approved licenses. However, in the open data space many countries have in parallel developed their own open government licenses for data and content, and many of these national licenses have not been approved by the Open Knowledge Foundation. This is something we are working to navigate as we develop the DPG Standard further. 

A Note on Up/Downstream Sharing 

Presently, in order to be DPG Standard compliant, the open licenses we list apply only to the core or generic project. The type of open license used for the generic project will determine which open license requirements, if any, apply for national implementations. For example, if the generic DPG project uses what is commonly called a full copy-left license like the GNU Public License, a national implementation will be required to be similarly licensed. At the other end of the spectrum, most permissive licenses, like Apache, impose no restrictions on which licenses can be used for implementations, and allow also for proprietary approaches.

The Case for Clarity

Ambiguous or vague licenses are problematic because they’re open to interpretation and may cause confusion for stakeholders seeking to re-use technology, data or content. New licenses often only add to this challenge, as they are frequently developed based on bespoke use cases and purposes, and without sufficient attention to ensuring clarity and consistency in terminology.

To enable the growth of a global community of sharing, we have therefore only included licenses in the DPG Standard that have been approved by leading stakeholders in their respective domains such as OSI, Creative Commons and Open Data Commons. As a general rule, these licenses are clear and allow broad use, modification, and sharing, without onerous restrictions (refer to the full list of approved licenses).     

For more information on the Digital Public Goods Alliance or the Digital Public Goods Standard, visit our website. 

For specific inquiries related to licensing, please reach out to: nominations@digitalpublicgoods.net