On 23 Dec 2008, at 16:22, Chris Morley wrote: > Peter Miller wrote: >> The UK Department for Transport, together with Traveline, is offering >> to make available the bulk of the data from their NaPTAN and NPTG >> data >> sets to >> the OpenStreetMap project. > > Well done Peter Miller, this is very welcome and illustrates the > importance of OSM having professional supporters with influence as > well as vision. > Absolutely. There is growing awareness and interest in official circles. The DfT chief scientist, Brian Collins is aware of the initiative and gives it his full support.
> But it sounds as if the DfT is conceding the concept of open data is > rather reluctantly: the transfer process seems to complicate things > without any useful result. I really don't think it will be a problem. If we get a 'team' together we can probably agree the import process with them in a few days. As I understand it there is a small amount of data in the source files that is confidential to the department (addresses or something) but this is not data that we would want anyway. They just want to be sure that these bits don't get out as well. The cautious wording is mine and is as much to reassure the people in the department who are new to CCBYSA that nothing fundamental is changing from their side. I understand that there is also a small income associated with licencing the current data to commercial parties and at this stage they don't want to say to another bit of the DfT 'by the way, you know that data that you sell over there - well we give it away over here'. I believe that this is why the updates will be occasional not daily. >> For the avoidance of doubt the datasets themselves will remain Crown >> copyright. The Department >> is however offering a single one-off bulk import to OpenStreetMap >> under >> the required CCBYSA licence used on OSM. > ... >> An import process will be designed by the team and agreed with the >> contact person at the DfT > ... >> On completion of the import the source datasets would be deleted. > > Couldn't somebody write a script to re-extract the data from planet? > They would then have the NAPTAN and NPTG data, still with Crown > Copyright but with a CCBYSA licence, which they could publish. The > Department of Transport would no longer control of who has use of the > complete dataset, which presumably is the reason for the complicated > transfer process. It's a pity that the data wasn't released with fewer > strings in the first place, but I guess this was as far as the DfT was > prepared to progress. > I think we might be making more of this than is the case. As I understand it the process will be as follows: 1) We will agree how we are doing the import and what data we want to import and also what we will do about data that is already in the DB. We will document this on the wiki and discuss it on talk-GB. 2) They will then give us the source files (which contains a small amount of data which we are not importing and they don't want us to import) 3) We will do the import. 4) We delete the source files (including the small amount of data we don't want). 5) We have the data we imported for ever as per CCBYSA. 6) At a later data we might be offered a refresh of the data to update the records. I am sure these updates will get more frequent as the department gets more comfortable with the process and the benefits to the professional community become clearer. 7) When the new licence appear, they, along with every other contributor will read it and decide if they will agree to it. This should be a formality as long as the licence is good. Regards, Peter > Chris > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-GB mailing list > Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
