ePetition Covering Public Data From The Likes Of The BBC

[C E Macfarlane]

See below ...

>     > http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/71556
>     
>     Unfortunately I don't feel able to support it.
>     
>     It seems to be conflating open source implementations with open data
>     formats, which isn't a particularly helpful thing to do.

It is not conflating the two, it is saying that they are both equally valid aims for the same reasons.  Too often people are only concerned about the former and forget all about the latter.
     
>     If the overall cost of a commercial solution is less than that of an
>     open source solution, there is no fundamental reason why the tiny
>     proportion of the cost that is "licensing fees" should be considered a
>     waste as the petition seems to claim.

You seem to have missed the phrase 'wherever reasonably possible' in the petition.
     
>     If you want to make a petition about open access to data, then by all
>     means do so — but as Jon pointed out, doesn't the government *already*
>     have a policy which requires open access and standard formats?

I believe that there is some policy concerning things like word-processor documents and spreadsheets, but I'm not aware of anything that covers publicly available raw electronic data.     
    
>     It's also rather naïve to claim that purely because an institution is
>     government-funded, all its output should be available to the general
>     public without restriction. Want to see every memo ever 
>     produced by the
>     MOD?

The petition is not saying anything about the internal data of any such organisation.  It is saying that structured data that is publicly available from such organisations should be made available in an appropriate open data structured format, not in some obscure proprietary format, or in some non-structured format from which it difficult or impossible to recreate the underlying data structure.