I'm kicking myself because I've been taking far too narrow an interpretation of "an open source approach". I've been focused on getting people to release data. That's the data analogue of tossing code over the wall, and we know it takes more than a tarball on an FTP server to get the benefits of open source. The same is true of data.

Open source discourages laziness (because everyone can see the corners you've cut), it can get bugs fixed or at least identified much faster (many eyes), it promotes collaboration, and it's a great training ground for skills development. I see no reason why open data shouldn't bring the same opportunities to data projects.

And a lot of data projects need these things.

I've been saying for a while that open data is a sort of new frontier. Open source is relatively wide spread and there is a general low hum of understanding about it in many places. For me, I sum it up by saying to people that they need to understand that their "code is worthless".

The next step is coming to understand about open data, and why we should care. Why we should convince people that their "data is worthless".

With various bits of data locked into proprietary silos (e.g. residential real estate in Canada in the MLS system), it's hard to see that "data is worthless".

When everyone and their brother is publishing directories of businesses and trying to make money off these directories, it's hard to see.

How much more money could be made if we didn't have to start by recreating a directory listing of businesses from scratch every single time? Why can't the directory of spas coordinate and cooperate with a listing of green businesses, or businesses in a geographic area?

And those are just some areas that seem easy to dive into and start explaining. I am even more interested in what happens when we go "open by default", and various bits of data are available (yes, all semantic web-like) to be mashed up and re-used without explicit though being given to what or where the data might be re-used for down the line.

This goes nicely with my last repost on learning the culture. With open data, we are not only learning/teaching the culture, but we need to do more work on creating the culture along the way.