[OSGeo-UK] Responding to the consultation on opening Ordnance Survey's data

[Jo Walsh]

dear all,

Vanessa Lawrence, Director of Ordnance Survey, gave a frank and clear 
talk about the consultation on access to national mapping data in the 
UK, at the Digimap 10th birthday event in Edinburgh yesterday.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/ordnancesurveyconsultation

"Be heard clearer, earlier" was one of the points in Vanessa's talk.
Organisations are sweating over collective responses, from industry 
associations, interest groups. Compromise responses leave limited room 
for expression.

"There is nothing to stop you from sitting down on a Sunday evening and 
framing your views"... "this is your chance to say what you have been 
thinking all along." The consultation homepage itself makes it clear 
that the questions are just a guideline, and that responses can be 
broader than a reaction to Options 1, 2, and 3 outlined in the document.

I started drafting an "Open Response to the OS consultation".
This is an attempt to set out the case for open licensing all OS data, 
and the reasoning behind a sustainability model for it, as succinctly as 
can be managed. Would ideally like to publish this under the banner of 
OSGeo-UK and OKFN. Hoping for feedback on the idea, but more than that, 
edits on the draft document:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATJnv_t9ROmXZGN0Yjk3ampfMjBmM2ZqZnpkMg&hl=en

Looking to be finishing this in the second week of February,


jo
--