[OSGeo-Discuss] Greece follows INSPIRE (and attempts to go OpenGeo?)

[Nikos Alexandris]

Greetings to the list.

(Apologies to the BCC-ed recipients since this might or might not be of your 
interest)

The Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change [1] (yes, you 
read correctly) has decided to (finally) put on a public discussion the law 
that concerns a national infrastructure for (geo)spatial data [2].

It appears to be just a "normalisation" of the current Greek law-framework to 
match (or catch up) the European directive INSPIRE. And indeed, it may be the 
driving force behind it within the current Greek mess (no matter how far this 
mess is real or virtual for the sake of "let's make money").

There are, however, chances to broaden the spectrum of this new law to clarify 
important issues. For example, the license of geospatial data will be provided 
cost-free but with the limitation for non-commercial use. My understanding is 
that this limitation is not only needless but anti-productive in many ways 
[3].

Another example is the focus of the law to be passed more on the 
organisational aspect of the infrastructure (with lots of limitations) and in 
a lesser extent to the social aspect(s) and effects which are of paramount 
importance [4].

Noteworthy to mention is the difficulty when translating special technical 
terms from English in Greek which leads often to non-clear definitions. There 
are various comments on the "Definitions" section [5].

This is just a glimpse of course of the total 31 articles which compose the 
law. All in all, the law is on the right track. Yet, it needs fine tuning to 
prohibit misuse.

One thing that is not positive, at least from my perspective, is(=was) the 
narrow time-window (only 10 days) for which the law is open for public 
comments. Unfortunately, I did not notice this until yesterday. Today 
30.06.2010 at 23:59 (local time) the comments section will be locked :-(

Nevertheless, this move is a ground-breaker considering how Greek governments 
(re-)acted in the past. It is a clear sign of several people willing to go 
Open(Geo).

Please, readers that (understand Greek and) are interested in this, or readers 
that know people that (understand Greek and) work in this field, comment... 
comment... comment... (...typical Greek, just climb to the top or touch down - 
no in between solutions).

Thank you for your attention,
Nikos

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[1] <http://www.ypeka.gr/>
[2] National Infrastructure for Geospatial Data 
<http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=757>

[3] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=737>
[4] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=756>
[5] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=754>