[Qgis-user] Public Sector Mapping Agreement

[Saber Razmjooei]

On Thu, 2011-03-03 at 22:03 +0000, Andrew Chapman wrote:
> Hi Sam
> If I understand what you are proposing, I don't think that it would be
> permitted within the OS licence. 
> Use will be free to approved organisations, but only to them and
> sub-contractors who have signed an approved sub-licence agreement. The goal
> seems to be to make it easy for anyone in central and local government (or
> working for or with them) to use the data - the community has paid for the
> production of the data out of taxation so it is silly to expect to have to
> pay for it all over again. Where the use would be commercial, OS is required
> to generate income to reduce its costs.
I remember there was (and probably still is) a big debate about
releasing data for free:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/29/free-our-data-ordnance-survey

Other models (in South Africa :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/28/free-our-data-e-government?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487  provide maps for free to all. The way new business will emerge and also the data gets reused will generate enough tax income for the government to run the public mapping. 
(an extract from http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file45136.pdf
:"In 2008 a government report suggested that shifting OS to a free data
model would benefit the economy by £156m annually, while costing the
government only £12m.")

I have not seen the OS report, so not sure how they have carried out
their business case. But for sure, other (fully paid - even for public
sector or completely free for all) were (are ....) viable options.

Regards
Saber


> The weblink I initially provided gives all the legal conditions and a
> slightly less confusing and relatively plain English explanation of what can
> and cannot be done.
> 
> Andrew
> ________________________________________
> From: samvekemans at gmail.com [mailto:samvekemans at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Sam
> Vekemans
> Sent: 03 March 2011 20:18
> To: Andrew Chapman; osm-fork at googlegroups.com; Brendan Morley; Robert Coup;
> post; qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org; Ed Corkery
> Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] Public Sector Mapping Agreement
> 
> Hi,
> Thats great news!
> Thanks for sharing
> 
> 
> FYI, one of the things im working on with the folks at koordinates.com
> is to upload and provide a direct link to the geo-data available from
> Ordnance Survay to koordinates.com, so then all of the data will be
> available at a central source, and in the same standard .shp file
> format.
> 
> 
> Koordinates.com also has API access, so the hopes is that their will
> be a way to directly extract data from koordinates.com to be usable
> for the qgis work.
> 
> 
> 
> I already and downloaded a few sample files from it, so the linkage
> should not be that hard to make.
> 
> 
> cheers,
> sam
> 
> On 3/3/11, Andrew Chapman <andrew.chapman at donkagen.co.uk> wrote:
> > Ordnance Survey is introducing their "Public Sector Mapping Agreement for
> > England and Wales" as of 1 April 2011. This is a major change to their
> > licensing and will provide free access to OS MasterMap and other layers to
> > all public bodies, layers of local government (including the approximately
> > 10,000 parish councils)... and also permit free sub-licensing to
> > subcontractors. Directly and, indirectly, this could dramatically increase
> > the number of potential users of QGIS. Details can be found at
> >
> www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/business/sectors/government/publicpsmafaq
> > s.html.
> > I'm a member of a parish council, but am working with the county council
> > (plus Environment Agency, Highways Agency, etc) in different areas looking
> > at local community sourcing of GIS data, but especially relating to
> > flooding.
> > To encourage take-up for both GIS and QGIS, it may help if there were
> > tutorials to take a new user of GIS through the steps to download data
> from
> > Ordnance Survey (probably only in GZ format for the topology layers).
> > To date I've been getting data as shapefiles - when I last tried (an
> earlier
> > version) QGIS wouldn't load .gz and the support for .gml may have been
> > incomplete.
> > Is anyone else using Ordnance Survey .gz files directly?
> > Would the best advice for users new to GIS be to convert to shapefiles or
> > use a database (something I've not yet managed to do)?
> > Are there any UK users involved with town or parish councils?
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Qgis-user mailing list
> > Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
> >
> 
> 
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