A good idea, in principle. Small point of order though: I was of the understanding that OGL is not quite compatible with CC-BY - AFAIK, it's something to do with database rights. I'm not an expert on this, though, and am happy to be corrected.
Richard Symonds On 6 Oct 2011, at 15:16, Tom Morris <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > The government have a consultation going on at the moment about the > future of the Public Data Corporation. The PDC is responsible for > commercially valuable public data including Ordnance Survey, Land > Registry and Met Office data. While the government is releasing a lot > of data under the Open Government License (which is compatible with > Wikimedia's content as it basically boils down to government-branded > CC BY). In fact, we have added OGL photos to Commons and some of them > are now in use on enwiki. > > But the data controlled by the PDC could potentially be of use to > Wikimedians: the Ordnance Survey and Met Office data could be used to > produce better, more detailed maps of Britain and those images can be > reused by projects like Wikipedia (to illustrate place names), > Wikinews (for original research stories), Commons, > Wikibooks/Wikiversity (for geography textbooks/tutorials etc.). > > Being able to merge government-produced data that we have funded the > creation of (through taxation) with volunteer produced content > (through Wikimedia, Open Street Map, free and open source software) > could dramatically help our mission of supporting the spread of free > and open knowledge. The Dutch government recently agreed to release a > lot of their geographical information for free, and it'd be great if > the UK could too. > > Is there any interest in putting together a response to the > government's consultation on the Public Data Corporation basically > saying we're firmly in favour of the government releasing as much as > they possibly can under free licenses. We could do this either as > Wikimedia UK or, if that isn't kosher with the charity application, as > "Wikimedians in the UK" or something. ;-) > > Yours, > > -- > Tom Morris > <http://tommorris.org/> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia UK mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list [email protected] http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
