Petition to free OSGB digital map data

SK53 · 2009-05-03T08:40:47.000Z

An online petition has been started at the 10 Downing Street site. Only 120 or so signatories so far!

SK53

RogerStenning · 2009-09-19T14:44:53.000Z

Regrettably, I think you’re onto a loser on this one. Unlike the United States Geological Survey (USGS), whose mapping data is open source due to the terms of their charter from the US Government, OSGB are a UK government organisation who agency status requires them to make a profit.

While technically, it’s our tax money that’s allowed them initially to generate the vast majority of the base mapping over the last bucket-load of decades, these days, they get a large percentage of their money from licencing the data commercially. Given the vast amounts of money this would cost the government if they made this data open-source, I can’t see it happening any time before there’s an exothermic reaction in hell

Alex_McKee · 2009-09-20T06:58:37.000Z

Also with all 3 main political parties currently trying to out-do each other in pledges to cut back government programmes it’s a really politically poor time for such a petition. It’s just so unlikely to get any support.

RogerStenning · 2010-04-01T11:06:48.000Z

Well… colour my gast well and truly flabbered! OS are to release the following datasets to PD from today…

• OS Street View
• 1: 50 000 Gazetteer
• 1: 250 000 Colour Raster
• OS Locator • Boundary-Line
• Code-Point Open
• Meridian 2
• Strategi
• MiniScale
• Land-Form PANORAMA
• OS VectorMap District (available in May 2010)

Naturally, the OS servers have been swamped and are as erratic as a drunk’s straight line progress following the release of the news!

Harry_Wood · 2010-04-01T14:35:17.000Z

Yep. OpenStreetMap helped make that happen!

It’s not released PD. It’s released cc-by-sa-3.0

Keep any eye on this wiki page for details of what it means for us: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Opendata

RogerStenning · 2010-04-01T18:32:44.000Z

Hiya Harry - Trust you’re well Yeah, just saw that (re cc-by-sa-3.0). Well, it’s a start, anyhow We’ll see how well it progresses next year, when they say they’re going to review the licence documents. We’ll see if they really mean “open & PD” at that time, rather than cc-by-sa-3.0. I also note that their licence document bears the “Unclassified” stamp, lol. I strongly suspect their canteen menu bears the stamp “Confidential”

Roger

Richard · 2010-04-02T18:51:42.000Z

CC-BY, not CC-BY-SA. Fortunately!

RogerStenning · 2010-04-02T19:02:22.000Z

Would you believe they prevent you selecting and copying the text of their licence in the PDF?! How anal is that?!

Anyhow…

"Creative Commons

These terms have been aligned to be interoperable with any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence. This means that you may mix the information with Creative Commons licensed content to create a derivative work that can be distributed under any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence."

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/licence/docs/licence.pdf

Appears they want it to look like this… http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ - I dunno what the abbreviation is supposed to be for this, perhaps someone will confirm?

Roger