[intl-discuss] Australian OSGeo Chapter

[Tim Bowden]

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 14:10 +0100, Arnulf Christl wrote:
> Tim Bowden wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > There is a move to create an Australian OSGeo Chapter.  See the wiki
> > page at http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Australia.  Discussion about the
> > formation of the Chapter is starting to move to the international
> > discuss list; see here
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/www_international-discuss to
> > subscribe if you're interested but not already subscribed.
> > 
> > There is a tentative informal face to face meeting going to be held in
> > Sydney on the evening of Tuesday 2nd Jan; venue not yet decided.  If
> > you'd like to attend, drop me a line (tim.bowden_at_westnet.com.au).
> > There will be another informal meeting in Perth a week or so later.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Tim Bowden
> > Mapforge Geospatial
> 
> Hi,
> at http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Australia it says that: 
> 
> [...]
> ...but Open access to geospatial data is not one of the goals of OSGeo (according to OSGeo's About page). 
> [...]
> 
> at http://osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html in the second bullet it says:
> 
> "To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless without data."
> 
> The term "freely available" is obviously good for interpretation but it should cover the part of the Local Chapter Guideline requirements. Seeding and growing a local chapter can be quite an issue therefore we chose "guidelines" instead of "rules" and have various levels of formality starting with a simple Wiki page. 
> >From my perspective OSGeo its about three meta level issues:
> * Software (curr 10 projects, some already graduated, formal Incubation committee)
> * Education (formal committee, several work groups)
> * Geodata (formal committee, several work groups including meta data)
> The last bullet refers both to accessibility of public geodata (as now also promoted through the European INSPIRE) and really, really Free data (with capital F) like they are producing at OpenStreetMap from scratch, or are available for free (fx. postal codes of Germany). 
> 

You're right; I misread the OSGeo goals section (read it much too late
at night).  The inconsistency I thought I found isn't there.  I'll edit
the page to suit.  You're right though about there being room for
interpretation.  I can see a number of possible scenarios fitting in;
* Data that is free of cost
* Data that is free to redistribute (and modify)
* Data that anyone is free (able) to acquire (at reasonable cost)

I'm one of the first to jump up and down about access to Free geodata
but the issue as we all know is not so clear cut.  Data needs to be
maintained, and that costs real money.  Sometimes there is real benefit
in society (ie, govt) wearing the cost of keeping the data free and
sometimes it works best when the end user(s) pays to keep it up to date;
whoever pays usually gets to decide on things like access to the data or
freedom to redistribute.  Unfortunately all too often the result is not
what we would like.   Which model suits which data set is often not an
easy question to answer though.


> For the first steps in creating a Local Chapter it is definitely not required that you host, start, publish or do whatever about a spatial dataset. 

No, but the chapter's position on the issue needs to be in line with
OSGeo's position.  My misreading lead me to the mistaken impression that
OSGeo didn't have a /formal/ position on the issue of free data but
required the chapter to have a /formal/ position.


> But as I learned at a EuroOSCON presentation NZ seems to have sold all of its geodata to a private company and now has to buy it back in bits and pieces. Ican imagine that for NZ a free set of geospatial data would probably be quite high up on the wish list.
> 

This is an interesting case study.  In a democracy the authority of the
govt comes from the people, and as such the govt needs to remember that
it is not free to act in it's own interest.  It should put the broader
public interest first.  In practise we all know this often doesn't
happen all that well. Unless the issue is 'hot' and has some visibility
beyond the govt functionaries dealing with it, there is no party
advocating for the public interest.  Hence decisions like this one which
may well provide for some short term benefit for the govt, but appear to
go against the longer term interests of the public.

> Best regards, 
> Arnulf. 

Regards,
Tim Bowden
Mapforge Geospatial