US Census transcription

The two biggest differences are:

1) The census databases on FamilySearch cannot be re-used, repurposed, or re-posted elsewhere. The current terms of use on the FamilySearch website specifically prohibit transmitting materials from their site to other sites or posting content onto other websites or computer networks. They also specifically prohibit any commercial use- you are only permitted to use materials on their site for your own personal, noncommercial use, so you cannot use it to create new innovative services and technologies that would be beneficial to genealogists, historians, and the public.

By contrast, there will be no such restrictions on the transcripts created by volunteers on the Open Genealogy Data website (opengendata.org). Academic researchers, genealogists, historians, individuals or small businesses that wish to create innovative new services, and even the National Archives and Records Administration itself will all be able to download and use the transcribed data in any innovative way that they think could be of benefit to the public, or even just for their own research.

2) On FamilySearch, the public can only access the census within the constraints of the search capabilities specifically provided by FamilySearch on their site. You can search for and access individual records, but you do not have access to the entirety of the census database at once, which would be necessary for many types of research in a variety of fields (history, economics, anthropology, sociology, longitudinal studies, etc.) and also useful for some genealogy tasks such as one-name studies and location-based research.

By contrast, the Open Genealogy Data website will allow you to download the entire database of all of the volunteer transcripts so you can search, sort, group, access, and analyze the data in any way you see fit instead of being limited to just the functionality provided in the search form on the website. And scientists and statisticians will be able to analyze the data using their own computer programs and algorithms.