OS OpenData and Its Effect on Non-commercial Cartography

Author: Chilton, Steve

Source: Cartographic Journal, The, Volume 48, Number 3, August 2011 , pp. 183-185(3)

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Abstract:

There was considerable excitement in the geodata world when it was announced that Ordnance Survey would be releasing considerable amounts of data, and on 1 April 2010, it finally came to pass. Immediately, there was discussion in the data community on what the effect would be on cartography, both commercial and non-commercial. This report details some of the discussion that took place in the non-commercial sector, mainly through a case study of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. By April 2010, The Guardian had been running its Free Our Data campaign for 4 years. Would it continue or stop because one of its primary targets had been hit? It took the blog 8 days to even comment on the data release, then another month for a second entry to appear. Two more posts on 2 June and then on 4 June came one entitled ‘Is the campaign won? What do you think?’. Nineteen people chose to respond, with a sprinkling of queries about derived data, and the campaign and the blog just faded away. It re-surfaced as a twitter feed (@freeourdata) ‘lobbying UK gov’t to make non-personal data such as maps free for all sorts of commercial or noncommercial use’.

Keywords: OpenStreetMap; OpenData; OSM; Ordnance Survey; non-commercial; cartography

Document Type: Research Article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/000870411X13044121958786

Affiliations: Middlesex University, London, UK

Publication date: 2011-08-01

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