1.5 TB of James Webb Space Telescope data just hit the internet

A NASA-backed project using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has released more than 1.5 TB of data for open science, offering the largest view deep into the universe available to date. The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), a joint project from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Rochester …

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

COMMUNISM!

Give data away for free? How un-American!

[BobChip]

Re: COMMUNISM!

That's a little harsh - they are scientists, not MS. Science may be very competitive, but at the end of the day it is still all about sharing data.

[NoneSuch]

Re: COMMUNISM!

Tell that to the various weather services scooping up meteorological data for profit.

[DJO]

Re: COMMUNISM!

A: They only give it away after the scientists who booked the telescope time have had a long time to examine the data.

B: It's an international project, the processing was done in France and the wider scientific community is not parochial.

C: I know you were being sarcastic.

[GNU Enjoyer]

Re: COMMUNISM!

Giving data away for freedom (under a free license if necessary) would be an act of freedom and would previously be deemed American (but now it's the land of the nonfree, where sharing is deemed wrong).

Communists were known for restricting sharing by having a guard at each photocopier to prevent forbidden copying (which has been implemented by the USA via digital handcuffing software, some of which has been installed onto printers, which often refuse to photocopy things like US notes, even though doing so is perfectly legal).

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: COMMUNISM!

Ironically all US government data is assumed to be free (obv except for classified) while in Britain it's either expensive (postal address file, ordnance survey) or not available (almost all local government) or under some complex license

[GNU Enjoyer]

Re: COMMUNISM!

A lot of US government data and legislation is not free, as it's only accessible after the execution of nonfree JavaScript, or not made available and some laws are secret too (for example the laws related to domestic airline travel and IDs, even those such laws clearly cannot be classified information).

While work done by the US governments employees is regarded as not applicable for copyright, work done by contracted companies is regarded as applicable for copyright.

Provided you can actually get a copy of all the data, collecting a file physically or having it posted doesn't make it nonfree, just inconvenient.

[hittitezombie]

Re: COMMUNISM!

As soon as Trump hears about this, he will demand his cut of the money.

[Michael Hoffmann]

1.5TB?

About half the size of my fully extreme modded Skyrim then!

[Anonymous Coward]

About a third of the size of my "homework" hidden folder...

[redpola]

Jeyhan Kartaltepe understands that where there is one datum, there are several data. Must be a scientist.

[GNU Enjoyer]

I don't see a license or public domain release or copyright disclaimer on that dataset

Thus it's hard to know if you're allowed to do anything but look at the data, considering any work deemed creative is automatically copyrighted.

Works directly from NASA may not be eligible for copyright, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

At least SourceXtractorPlusPlus is released under a free license, so all good there (too bad copyright headers are missing on some .h files that are borderline trivial).

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: I don't see a license or public domain release or copyright disclaimer on that dataset

>work deemed creative is automatically copyrighted.

And in the case of Space, the "creator" is known for his poor anger management toward anyone not obeying his rules

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

"you can ... look in one spot and stare for a really long time"

He just described my Monday".

[hittitezombie]

A torrent would be nice.