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by minimaxir 3740 days ago
Less a competitor, more a non-canonical source of information that they cannot manage.

If your offshoot were to misrepresent data, for example, then you would become a liability, even if you weren't making money.

2 comments

Random tangent: your comment about unmanaged non-canonical misrepresented data reminds me of Zillow, who publish "facts" about real estate transactions, with no mechanism for error correction. Afrw years ago they posted an erroneous sale of my house -- which transaction never took place -- listing a sale price 20% lower than we'd paid for it. It directly harmed me, when we later tried to sell the house, when potential buyers cited zillow's "estimates" which of course were artificially, drastically lower because of the phantom transaction. There was no avenue for recourse; angry tweets got a half-baked response from a junior social media person, but it was never resolved. I wonder how many others zillow must have messed up.
That's a fair point. Easily enforceable by a proper license. One example is ETALAB open data license.