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I agree with the idea that the data should be open to the public. Research funded by public grants should be in the same category as well. But as a developer I
by LunaSea 12y ago
I agree with the idea that the data should be open to the public. Research funded by public grants should be in the same category as well.
But as a developer I know how quickly the technologies and developer needs change. There are often threads on the front page of HN and /r/programming about the technology turnover being too quick. From this practical point of view I find it difficult to see how an public entity could justify funding for stuff like this.
Also using companies like Google as an example for data-openness is not the best argument. API bait-and-switches are just too common these days.
- icebraining 12y agoTechnology turnover is irrelevant, programmers are well used to extracting data from old systems. Anything good nowadays will be good enough in 20 years (e.g. XML is from '98, and still vastly used).
- maxerickson 12y agoI didn't use Google as an example, I used that particular effort as an example. It involves dozens of transit providers opening their data, with no intermediate reliance on Google. As far as the spending, the public entity already has to have some sort of record of their scheduling. The justification for sharing it is simply that making things easier to use increases use of them. Perhaps that isn't the case, but it shouldn't take months of time to set up a system to dump an existing database, so for systems with thousands of users it should not be a significant expense.