The paper discusses about the direct and indirect costs of geospatial open data. As is defined in the article, open data are government data typically provided for free with minimal reuse restrictions. Open data are referred to as open government data where government plays an important role in regulating the open data system for collecting, processing, managing, sharing free data with certain value and cost to the public. It has been pointed out that open data does have high cost from data collection and maintenance process and other anticipated challenges because these data involved are free for customers to use, meaning little return for developing open data.
From my perspectives, first question is why open data are mostly managed and released by governments though there is a view that government data was already funded by the taxpayers? Is there any possibility for more companies or institutions to run the system for open data with more advanced geospatial data processing technologies while making funds from adverting investment on the website? Second question is to what extent should the open data be open? Is it necessary for open data to be accessible to everyone? What is the definition of the “general public”? Should government make the data understandable enough and easy enough for public costumers to use, or some partially-open data which can be shared for those who have been educated with some professional GIS knowledge. People with professional skills (academic use) would process those open data (much rawer) on their own for unique purpose which will reduce cost for government original data process. Moreover, if open data are used for commercial use, cost should be placed on those cases.
The last point is open data give rise to the new sources to get data like self-publishing data and data differences and variance of data forms force the development for GIScience. Ontologies in GIScience firstly should be more widely developed and new technologies for filtering valuable data and formulating data are indispensable. This paper helps me a lot in understanding the open data concept and emphasis the indirect cost (challenges) for policy maker to consider how should open data system be better developed with a clear stating structure.