Joel Gurin during the book launch of the Open Data Now book on February 5 at the Open Data Bay Area meetup gave the following working definition of Open Data (podcast from 30th of January 2014):
“it’s accessible public data that people, companies, and organizations can use to launch new ventures, analyze patterns and trends, make data-driven decisions, and solve complex problems”.
And on the blog:
“Open Data is a democratic and a democratizing idea and one that is business savvy at the same time. The basic idea of Open Data is not to benefit the people who hold the data but to set it free in a way that can benefit the public in important ways. I think of it as data with a public purpose; I think of it as data with a mission. The mission can be to promote government accountability, help start new businesses, accelerate scientific research, or do many other things that are part of the public good”.
Aristea Fotopoulou 