Ask Slashdot: How To Both Mirror and Protect Crowdsourced Data? 76
New submitter cellurl writes "I run wikispeedia, a database of speed limit signs. People approach us to mirror our data, but I am quite certain it will become a one-way street. So my question is: How can I give consumers peace of mind in using our data and not give up the ship? We want to be the clearing house for this information, at the same time following our charter of providing safety. Some thoughts that come to mind are creating a 'Service Level Agreement' which they will no doubt reject, or MySQL-clustering, or rsync. Any thoughts, (technically, logistically, legally) appreciated."
Be the best (Score:4, Interesting)
Protect from what? (Score:4, Interesting)
You want to "Protect...Data", "not give up the ship", "follow...our charter of providing safety". But what is it that you don't what mirrors to do with the data? Less verbiage, more clarity, please.
Re:Be the best and stop trying to "own" data (Score:2, Interesting)
Other sites slurp OpenStreetMap data all the time. No biggie, that's what it's for - if the traffic gets too much they *ask* you to take a mirror to reduce bandwidth costs. OSM has a "share with attribution" kinda licence.
If you're really wiki-anything, you'll recognise that this is public information that you curate. Let 'em have it.
Re:Be the best and stop trying to "own" data (Score:4, Interesting)
Well that's nice until a facebook comes along to crush the myspace. "Public data" isn't something to be owned. But a specific distribution method or implementation of it can be. Yellowpages anyone?
If they're trying to make a living off this there is the real world factor of keeping this info someone secured and then following up with a business model of some sort. Just because it says non-profit doesn't mean everyone works for free.