We provide users with an archive containing various datasets necessary for the effective use of Orekit. This archive is available on the Orekit website under the name orekit-data-main.zip. The data it contains is retrieved using the tools published in the orekit/orekit-data Git repository.
Neither of these contains any indication of a license. This is fundamentally problematic for a FOSS project, even though I suspect that these scientific datasets are not protected by copyright (since they are not the result of human creativity and their primary value lies in being free of any subjectivity) or are published under terms that allow for their widespread reuse.
More precisely, there are two licenses to establish:
- The easy part: the license for the scripts provided in the Git repository (the Apache v2.0 license should work for everyone here).
- The hard part: the license for the datasets.
The list of data that was downloaded and then included in the package is provided in the repository’s README file:
I think we can quickly clear up any uncertainties if everyone contributes their own knowledge or insights regarding this data. I look forward to your comments, and thank you in advance.