We're Getting on the Bus* For Open Licensing of Earth Observation Data

*clever satellite industry pun intended

We applaud Umbra for taking a public stance on license rights for the Earth Observation (EO) industry.

At SkyWatch, our job is bridging supply and demand for EO. And that’s easier said than done, for many reasons. One of those reasons is the often antiquated, complex, and opaque licensing regimes that are incumbent in our industry.

To be clear: those who produce the spacecraft, sensors, and data products have the right to set their commercial terms by which we get/use/share their stuff. If we want their data, we need to abide by their terms. This is a privileged position earned on the back of many years of market leadership.?

But particularly for new entrants, in an industry that is expected to more than double in fewer than 10 years (and largely on the back of new end-markets and new end-users), is there a better way? Yes. Welcome to the era of open and permissive EO licensing. And thanks to Umbra for hoisting this flag.?

Is CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International) perfect? No. As a downstream EO user, you still need to read and understand the terms of license. But it provides a common, transparent, and flexible framework to access and use EO data. Ultimately, this means more innovative applications of that data, across a broader swath of industries, and faster growth for all of us who make our living here.

For our part, we will be adopting a similar CC4.0-based license as the standard for data hosted on our TerraStream platform. It is still up to our partners to choose the final set of terms under which their data is sold, but SkyWatch endorses the same open/permissive principles as Umbra has put forward.??

We’re Getting On The Bus. And wherever you sit in the EO value chain, we encourage you to do likewise.

David Proulx , Chief Product Officer, SkyWatch