They haven't put up an explict copyright notice + license so one cannot
say for sure. However looking through the list of data sources on:
http://www.maplibrary.org/data_sources.asp
indicates that their data comes either from:
1. US government (definitely open)
2. The WHO (UN -- not sure of the status but would guess it is open)
3. Egypt and South African government (not sure of status)
Might be worth dropping them a line and asking them to put an explicit
'open knowledge'[1] license on the material.
~rufus
[1] http://okd.okfn.org/
Mateusz Loskot wrote:
Hi,
Can the maplibrary.org mentioned below be considered as a public
geodata provider for African countries?
Cheers
Mat
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Freegis-list] Converter for Map Library Files (.mlb) format?
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 18:53:43 +0200
From: Bernhard Reiter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.maplibrary.org
has Libre Geodata for many African countries.
Unfortunately they only offer gratis, non-free software for windows,
using the .ecw (ER Mapper) format for raster
and presumetly their own format for vectors called map library files (.mlb).
There is a short speficification available as well.
The site seems to partly be an advertisment side for the sponsor
that offers zero cost proprietary software for some African organisations.
Does somebody now Free Software converters for the used formats?
I know that gdal can do .ecw, if you use proprietary libraries.
Maplibrary.org claims that they have choosen the format because they could
use it royalty free. This indicates that a Free Software implementation
should
be possible.
The .mlb format(s) seem to be quite easy to read.
It would be quite nice to enable the use of the data on GNU/Linux
or other free operating systems.
Thanks,
Bernhard
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