Categories
Android Thoughts

Cultural differences..

This one very rare tweet from Andy Rubin, lead on the Android Programme at Google in 140 characters perfectly embodies the open and geeky culture at Google. This is of course not always initially a great advantage when building consumer facing products, for my non geeks readers

“mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

means you can download the source code that is android from the Internet and build your own version without asking google..

If you are missing the context, this tweet appears to me in response to comments made by Steve Jobs of Apple yesterday,  but so far in the history of IT Open always beats Closed…

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)
Categories
Data Policy Thoughts

The Open Government Licence

Last week in addition to the new more open OS licesning, another in many ways more fundamental new license was introduced with little fanfare, but I would argue it’s impact if widely adopted could be far more important.

The new UK Open Government licence (OGL) developed by the National Archives, is a robust licence developed using Creative Commons like language for the specific purpose of distributing Government data. The OGL will be the become the default licence for UK Crown copyright, replacing the current Click-Use system and the data.gov.uk terms and conditions, and will therefore create a simple and consistent framework for the reuse of Public Sector Information.

The Key elements of the license are that a user may,

  • copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Infomation;
  • adapt the Information;
  • exploit the Information commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

There is a attribution clause which requires reference back to the OGL website where it’s possible.

This is a great step forward, we just now need to continue to push public sector bodies to release their information, as one more of the perceived barriers has been removed.

Written and submitted from the T3 BA Lounge (51.469N, 0.460W)
Categories
Ordnance Survey Thoughts

Well done OS ! derived rules clarified..

I could be snarky and say better late than never, however the guidelines and new licenses today published by Ordnance Survey are a really positive step forward.

As requested by many, myself included, the OS in their documents have tried to explain with examples what is now possible to create and then distribute in terms of new geospatial data.

This should solve the problem for many potential users of Google Maps, for example, who have been frightened off from using this great free resource  by previously aggressive if unclear guidelines.

Some key aspects..

  • As expected there are no restrictions on deriving or displaying data based on OS Opendata datasets.
  • Data collected by independent means (GPS, field survey) and then verified in relation to OS data is free of OS restrictions
  • The real innovation “Free to use” terms, means that organisations licensing data for business use, are able to infer the position or create new data without restrictions as long as the new data is not a direct copy of an existing feature in the OS product.

These  aspects of the new license/guidelines are illustrated with some rather cheesy but useful case studies.

There are however some more grey areas, which may still cause concern to some, around addressing (oh no !! the humanity) the creation of address centroids is seen as copying features!

I wonder a what level of abstraction this no longer the case, is a point representing a street range ok ? A neighbourhood ?

I fundamentally disagree with the example that a school catchment area is OS derived data, what intellectual effort has the OS contributed to it’s creation ?

Still overall this is a massive step forward and the OS should be congratulated on it’s effort in communicating their position clearly.

This is clearly one of the biggest news stories of the last few months for the UK, I can’t help but wonder while the announcements were not made in the public forum of the AGI conference.. Maybe this is the Macworld moment for Ordnance Survey ?

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)