Open data you can actually resell: the licensing filter

People assume "public" means "do whatever you like." It does not. The single most important decision in building a data product is not which source has the best numbers — it is which source has a licence that lets you redistribute the cleaned result at all. This is the filter we apply before any other.

"Free to view" is not "free to redistribute"

A lot of valuable data is free to *access* but explicitly forbids redistribution. Exchange feeds are the classic example: you can look, you can build internal analytics, but the terms of service prohibit handing the data — even transformed — to a third party. That rules out an entire category of otherwise-attractive sources for a data *store*, no matter how good the data is.

The licences we can build on

The green list is data released under terms that permit redistribution, typically with attribution:

• CC-BY / CC-BY-4.0 — redistribute freely, just credit the source. Most of the open energy and reference data we carry lives here.
• Public domain / CC0 — no strings; many government statistical agencies and some EU institutions publish this way.
• Open Government Licence and equivalents — permissive, attribution-based.

When upstream is CC-BY, the obligation passes through to you, the buyer: you get full usage rights, and the only ask is that the original source keeps its credit. We document that attribution in every product so you stay compliant without research.

The red list

What never makes it into the catalog, regardless of quality:

• Exchange / market-data feeds whose ToS forbid redistribution.
• Sources with non-commercial-only clauses (fine to look at, illegal to build a paid product on).
• Anything with share-alike terms that would force your downstream work open.
• Scraped data with no clear licence — absence of a licence is not permission.

Why this protects you

Buying from a store that has already run the licensing filter means you are not inheriting someone else's legal risk. Every ReadySet product can be traced to a named, redistributable upstream licence, and we tell you what it is on the product page. You build on it knowing the foundation is sound.

The numbers matter. The licence decides whether the numbers can become a product at all. We do that diligence first, so the catalog you browse is, by construction, data you can actually use — and, where your own terms allow, resell.