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GIS Thoughts

Tim Berners-Lee agrees: our data should be intelligent (not free)

As reported in this weeks Guardian OS Story, Tim Berners-Lee has commented on the OS and the role of Geographic Information in the semantic web.

Contrary to earlier reports, Sir Tim seems NOT to be asking for free access to geospatial data… instead, intelligent, feature based geospatial data, rather than simple mapping should be made more accessible.

Quoting directly from the Guardian…

Berners-Lee said it may be reasonable for OS, the premier state-owned supplier of public sector information, to continue to charge for its high-resolution mapping. But even if licences were required, he added, OS should make its data open to manipulation. “I want to do something with the data, I want to be able to join it with all my other data,” he said. “I want to be able to do Google Maps things to a ridiculous extent, and not limited in the way that Google Maps is.”

This is consistent with the work the OS have been undertaking in semantic referencing systems over the past couple of years, and with the development of intelligent geospatial database products like OS MasterMap.

I’m really proud of the work we are doing in this area, and it is good to see this is recognised by Sir Tim, to find out more this is a good reading list.

Written and submitted from the Holiday Inn Express Portsmouth, using my Vodafone 3G network card.

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