OS Licences

The message <[email hidden]>
from walkhighlands <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

Hi there,

Quoted message said:

Anyone running a website about walking (I know there's alot of you on
here) with OS maps might be interested in this story:

Quoted message said:

http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=159

Quoted message said:

I suspect this means pretty much all the OS maps on walkers sites will
be disappearing over the next year.

Quoted message said:

What do you think?

go to

http://www.whoownsscotland.org.uk/os.htm

and Andy's sad story.

When government departments get privatised they usually get spiteful and
mean minded as well.

Richard

Richard Spencer said:

When government departments get privatised they usually get spiteful and
mean minded as well.

It's funny how our system differs from the US one regarding how the public
have rights to work they have funded but once that decision has been made
how can one criticise a official for maximising the return?

What is the position about linking to google maps instead. Granted the
detail won't be there but isn't it possible to grab the google vector file
and super impose it on an os map at home possible.

AJH

andrew heggie said:

It's funny how our system differs from the US one regarding how the public
have rights to work they have funded but once that decision has been made
how can one criticise a official for maximising the return?

If an attempt to maximise revenue actually loses sales (and the income
isn't made up from other contracts) then criticism is appropriate.

If the net effect of commercialising the data is to lose value to the
whole economy (because projects can't pay their way) then the loss
to the original owners (us) may be greater than the cost of subsidising
free access through taxes. For example, it may be that we end up paying
more for road atlases due to OS licensing costs than we would have paid
in tax to support the OS. This might mean the original decision was wrong,
or that it is implemented in a way that did not meet expectations.

-adrian

andrew heggie said:

It's funny how our system differs from the US one regarding how the public
have rights to work they have funded but once that decision has been made
how can one criticise a official for maximising the return?

If an attempt to maximise revenue actually loses sales (and the income
isn't made up from other contracts) then criticism is appropriate.

If the net effect of commercialising the data is to lose value to the
whole economy (because projects can't pay their way) then the loss
to the original owners (us) may be greater than the cost of subsidising
free access through taxes. For example, it may be that we end up paying
more for road atlases due to OS licensing costs than we would have paid
in tax to support the OS. This might mean the original decision was wrong,
or that it is implemented in a way that did not meet expectations.

-adrian

andrew heggie said:

It's funny how our system differs from the US one regarding how the public
have rights to work they have funded but once that decision has been made
how can one criticise a official for maximising the return?

If an attempt to maximise revenue actually loses sales (and the income
isn't made up from other contracts) then criticism is appropriate.

If the net effect of commercialising the data is to lose value to the
whole economy (because projects can't pay their way) then the loss
to the original owners (us) may be greater than the cost of subsidising
free access through taxes. For example, it may be that we end up paying
more for road atlases due to OS licensing costs than we would have paid
in tax to support the OS. This might mean the original decision was wrong,
or that it is implemented in a way that did not meet expectations.

-adrian