[OSGeo-Discuss] Advocating Reasonable Public Access to Publicly Funded Geospatial Data

[David William Bitner]

Landon --

Please look at http://www.osgeo.org/geodata and join the mailing list.  The
OSGeo Geodata committee has been a part of OSGeo pretty much from the
beginning of OSGeo.

David

On 11/12/07, Landon Blake <lblake at ksninc.com> wrote:
>
>  Is there any effort at the OSGeo to advocate for "reasonable" access to
> publicly funded geospatial data? By reasonable I mean:
>
>
>
> [1] With an affordable price reflecting the actual cost to reproduce the
> data.
>
> [2] Released in a format that doesn't require expensive proprietary
> software.
>
>
>
> For example, the United States Forest Service has some extensive
> geospatial data sets available to the public, but they release it in ESRI
> Geodatabase Format. (They didn't respond to my requests for the data in
> Shapefile Format.) Another example is one of my local counties, which sells
> data in ESRI Shapefile format for $200 a layer under a very strict license
> agreement.
>
>
>
> I was wondering if there was any type of "committee" or other organized
> effort at the OSGeo that provided "education" and advocacy for reasonable
> access to publicly funded data. It seems like a natural fit for the
> organization, and one great way to enable everyday use of open source GIS
> programs. (At a minimum, it seems like we could keep a catalog of public
> agencies and there policy for the release of geospatial data.)
>
>
>
> Landon
>
>
>
>
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>


-- 
************************************
David William Bitner
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