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15 April 2005 To the stars... with a free mapI've just come back from the Forum on Open Geodata, an excellent event featuring such open GIS luminaries such as Steve 'Openstreetmap' Coast, Giles 'Social Tapestries' Lane, Jo 'pretty much everything' Walsh, Schuyler 'pretty much everything else' Earle et al, and helmed by the Open Knowledge Foundation's Rufus Pollock. Really interesting stuff. I came away with three abiding impressions. First off: this is a really buzzing area right now, and better still, one that's beginning to cohere. Various of the speakers made the same point about lobbying Ordnance Survey to provide a not-for-profit CC-like licence. The GPS-based mapping projects are coming together. And so on. Secondly, we're not that far off the elusive 'tipping point' where this hits some sort of mass consciousness. The Guardian and New Scientist articles are obvious examples, but it's also pretty telling that Ordnance Survey CTO Ed Parsons turned up to the forum (and joined in the discussions with gusto). It's not just a geekish preoccupation any more. Thirdly, something less positive: there is still major disconnect between the public sector and the public. Chris Lightfoot's rambunctious talk pushed the message that there's no free data to answer the basic question "who governs me?". Gesche Schmid's talk on the local government perspective was interesting, but served principally to emphasise that local councils do GIS very, very differently to everyone else in the room. Similarly, though Ed Parsons gave a sympathetic ear to the calls for free data, he didn't hold out any hope for OS making any of its material available freely to non-profit organisations. Noting that OS didn't sell a vector streetmap product, he suggested that campaigners should instead put their efforts behind projects such as Openstreetmap. Though this is disappointing, it's hardly surprising. All three parties have published manifestos this week promising to cut down on public sector "waste". This is where the Conservative promise to flog £400m of BW property comes from - a promise that would result in short-term gain for long-term loss, but sadly, that's the way the world works at the moment. In this climate, I can't see any Government agreeing to give OS data away freely for "big picture" gains... more's the pity. (Incidentally, one issue that deserves consideration is the 'inverse GPL' effect of the OS Pan-Government Agreement. In effect, central and regional Government bodies get free/cheap OS data, kind of as the payoff for NIMSA. Though this sounds innocuous, it means a lot of Government GI is sourced from/georeferenced to OS products. This makes it a 'derived work' subject to OS licensing, and militates against Government departments opening access to their own data independently of the OS.) Public sector concerns aside, it was an enjoyable and even exhilarating evening. I was only sorry that the time of the last train meant I couldn't continue to the pub discussion afterwards (oh yes, and that I missed the first 30 minutes thanks to the bunch of clowns who run Charlbury's train services). But thank you, Rufus, Jo, Schuyler, Steve and all. Good things are starting to happen. Comments | |
