Open Government Licence
The Open Government Licence (OGL) is a free licence for government data, content and source code created by the UK government. It is considered a free content licence and compatible with the requirements of all Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons. The OGL is compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution licence.
This page is to help co-ordinate porting of OGL-licensed content from UK government websites and publications to Wikimedia projects, specifically Wikimedia Commons for photographs, illustrations, sound files, video files and other multimedia content, and Wikisource for text content. Learning materials can be reused by Wikiversity. The other Wikimedia hosted projects including Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikiquote may also find new material they can incorporate into their projects.
There is continual reviewing of the OGL licensing framework, and interested Wikimedians/WMF/WMUK may wish to get involved in any future consultation with the government over the future of the OGL and the Public Service Information licensing framework.
Use on Wikimedia
- On Wikimedia Commons, all images and other media files that are being reused under the OGL are available in the OGL category. Use {{OGL}} on Commons.
- On English Wikipedia, articles where OGL text has been imported are in Category:Articles with imported Open Government Licence 1.0 text. OGL images on English Wikipedia are in Category:Open Government Licence images, but as they are free images they can be moved to Commons.
To-do list
- DFID photos (terms and conditions)
- Their Flickr stream is CC BY. Their website explicitly acknowledges that you can reuse Crown Copyright material under the OGL.
- Please place all images in Category:Images from Department for International Development on Commons.
- Department for Education publications to Wikisource (and Commons for graphics)
Government publications requiring clarification
- Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS)
- Claims to be Crown Copyright, but also sells photographs (both prints and digital images) and solicits user contributions on Flickr. Now the OGL is in place, what is the copyright situation of the images of the images RCAHMS deals with?
Government Flickr accounts
- Department for Education Flickr stream
- This stream contains a large quantity of images produced by the DfE which could be copied onto Commons if they were OGL licenced. —Tom Morris (talk) 08:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
- Department of Health Flickr stream
- FCO Flickr streams
- Flickr: British Monarchy (announcement) - does Buckingham Palace publish under Crown Copyright, and does it therefore come under the OGL?
- Met Office (linked from metoffice.gov.uk)
- Scottish Government (linked from scotland.gov.uk)
- They have licensed their images under Attribution-NonCommercial on Flickr, which is a non-free licence. Does the OGL override this?
- On the Flickr profile, it lists "All images are subject to Crown copyright otherwise otherwise indicated."
- Department for Business, Industry and Skills
- Photos on there are licensed with a mixture of CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND (both are not considered free content licenses by Wikimedia) but the ministerial portraits are licensed under Crown Copyright (and thus OGL) and CC BY-NC-ND.
- Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS)
- Photos in this account are all under CC BY-NC-ND, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere claiming they are Crown Copyright (and thus OGL).
- NI Environment Agency
- On Flickr, "All rights reserved". Copyright statement says "You may use and re-use the information featured on this website (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence."
- Transport Scotland (terms and conditions)
- On Flickr, "All rights reserved".
- "Images and photographs on this site are subject to Crown copyright protection unless otherwise indicated. You may re-use Crown copyright images subject to the conditions stated above. Images and videos on Transport Scotland's Flickr site and YouTube channel are subject to the licence restrictions shown on those sites, but are normally available to be re-used with attribution for non-commercial purposes only."
- Driving Standards Agency (terms and conditions)
- DEFRA (terms and conditions)