On 05/02/2013 07:34, Javier Ruiz wrote:
So what do you think the Open Data User Group should be working on? I
am sure they would be very keen to get your input. They are focusing on
location and the PAF following consultation with a broad network.
But maybe this is not working as well as it should?
I think that postal address location data is going to get a lot of
people asking for it to be released as open data, because it's very
widely used and a large number of organisations pay a lot of money to
use it. Nearly every courier firm, every major online retailer, etc,
makes extensive use of it. So there is a huge demand for it to be
available for free rather than as a chargeable dataset.
However, I'm not sure that commercial organisations wanting something
free rather than having to pay for it is necessarily a strong
justification for opening it up, and certainly won't be seen that way by
the government. The counter-argument will be that the people who need it
are the ones who can afford to, and currently do, pay for it, so making
it free simply subsidises their commercial activities from public funds.
A much stronger argument for releasing data under the OGL is the benefit
it will provide to community groups, non-profit organisations and
individuals who would like to be able to use the data but, currently,
cannot afford to. A second major argument is the benefits which follow
from a permissive licence that allows derivative works rather than
restricted terms of use. That includes commercial uses which are
desirable, but currently not possible within the current licensing
framework.
Now, I have to admit that I'm struggling a bit to see where either of
those two justifications will be served by opening up the PAF under the
OGL. Unlike basic postcode geolocation, it doesn't have a great deal of
use outside commercial applications, and those applications themselves
are reasonably well-served by the available licences - there isn't all
that much which people would like to do with it that they can't already do.
There's also the fact that the PAF is genuinely an expensive dataset to
maintain, and the prices charged for its use reflect that. There's
nothing stopping any other organisation - such as a courier firm, or
trade organisation representing them - from generating their own list of
geocoded delivery addresses and either using them internally and/or
reselling them, but the fact that they prefer, instead, to pay for
access to the PAF strongly suggests that, commercially, the price of it
is reasonable.
If you want my suggestions as to what to focus on for more open data, I
think that, rather than pushing for more even more data from
organisations (such as the OS) which have already gone a long way down
the open data route, it would be better to concentrate on the
departments and agencies which so far have been more resistant. The
Department of Justice and the Environment Agency are two which could do
with being poked with a considerably large stick.
Mark
--
http://mark.goodge.co.uk
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