The license governing the Volve oil field dataset strongly influences its the outreach and potential applications. The dataset was initially released under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license that prevented commercial use of the dataset and mandated all derivative material to be open-source, non commercial. Essentially, the dataset was supposed to be used exclusively by the open academia, and not for commercial entities. This license agreement was criticized by the community.
The owners of the Volve Oilfield dataset have now revised the license governing the dataset. Equinor, ExxonMobil Exploration & Production, Norway AS and Bayerngas Norge AS now grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to download and use the data-set for non-commercial and commercial purposes, including to create, produce and reproduce adapted material.
Here, we address three broad domains that could benefit from the new license.
Education
Professors/Educators can use the dataset in their course curriculum and do not need to be concerned about commerciality. Students can use the dataset in their study reports and capstone projects.
Course curriculum based on the dataset can be held under academic copyrights as defined by Universities.
Professional Training
Consultancies and professional training companies can incorporate the dataset into their courses and provide their clients with an additional dataset to explore.
Internal training programs can engage the dataset for knowledge dissemination amongst different teams.
Freelancers can use the dataset to demonstrate their algorithms, technologies and provide case studies based on the dataset. They can also train their clients on this dataset.
Research and Development
Researchers can use the dataset for studies that may be published in commercial portals.
The dataset can be developed as a standard platform amongst research consortia, Universities to demonstrate reproducibility of results, technology transfer and for professional discourse.
Start-up companies in the commercial innovation space can set up introductory case studies based on the Volve oilfield dataset. We have numerous companies using the SPE10 model to demonstrate their technologies, the Volve oilfield dataset will be a robust addition because it represents a real field.
Things to take care of…
Do not sell the dataset, only adapted/derived material based on the dataset can hold a commercial license.
Do not restrict sharing of the dataset in commercial applications.
Attribute Equinor and its partners while sharing your material. Include a notice of the Volve oilfield dataset license in the distribution package.
Follow your conscience and do not defame the dataset owners. Be thankful for their contribution to the open source community!
Please follow the citation rules listed here while referencing materials from the DiscoverVolve website. It helps us develop community goodwill and encourages collaboration for this initiative.
For the record, the dataset was originally posted in June 2018 with no licence at all (https://agilescientific.com/blog/2018/6/17/big-open-data-or-is-it). The CC BY-NC-SA licence was added in October of that year (https://agilescientific.com/blog/2018/10/16/volve-not-open-after-all). The new licence is better, if rather ambiguous, but unfortunately does not meet the definition of open data (https://opendatahandbook.org/guide/en/what-is-open-data/) because of the extra conditions.
I really wish they would just stick a CC-BY licence on there and then everything is clear.
I have heard that there are government regulations restricting open access.
Interesting, I have not heard that… from the government of Norway? Do you have a link or other info about it?
This is something I ‘heard’ from friends. Might just be a speculation.
In the wake of another data release, I wrote a blog post summarizing the latest changes: https://agilescientific.com/blog/2020/12/8/an-update-on-volve