This is balderdash and largely character assassination. The author's post contains essentially two points: - "Open Data hasn't resulted in 100% government tra

This is balderdash and largely character assassination. The author's post contains essentially two points: - "Open Data hasn't resulted in 100% government transparency" - "There are corporate influences in the open data movement, therefor the open data movement are just corporate sockpuppets" These two points are ridiculous on their face. Movements are things that take time. They are a process. They require citizen engagement, advocacy, and political pressure. The fact that the open data movement hasn't radically altered the way that politics are done in Canada (or the location of your choosing) does not mean that progress is not being made, or that we shouldn't stop demanding better data and better accountability. Second, if one is to write off any movement with a corporate interest, we may as well give up on the open source software movement. That a company like O'Reilly views open data as worth their time and attention does not mean that they wield undue influence over the subject material of what it is that people work on or wish to achieve. I would love to hear any accounts of O'Reilly or ESRI or Microsoft or Omidyar killing or interfering with projects because they disagree with them. The notion that open data is some how tainted by corporate touches is also so freaking frustrating because there already are businesses built around open data that everyone uses. Is government weather data somehow suspect because the Weather Channel has built a business around it? Should we block someone from building a business like the Weather Channel on government data? If so why? It's freaking open data, it's not like the Weather Channel controls it.