A guy I know up at Ryedale LUG has got me interested in the OpenStreetMap project.
The point of the project is to create a free, editable map of the the world.
Someone I was telling about this asked last night what the point was when he can get maps through his TomTom. Well the point is that the mapping data isn’t free – you have to pay TomTom to get the mapping data. The reason you have to pay them is because they have to pay the mapping people such as the Ordnance Survey.
Now, there is a whole sub-plot here which I paraphrase and may be slightly inaccurate. However, the gist is that the UK tax payer paid for much of the UK mapping to be created in the first place (see the © Crown on the OS site?), then the Ordnance survey charge us for the data we paid for the creation of in the first place. If I’m right then that’s not on, is it? This reminds me of Fight Club where they make their soap from the fat at lyposuction clinics and then sell their soap to ladies who frequent aforementioned clinics.
So, anyway, Al put me onto a guy who was selling a NaviGPS BGT-11 which is a GPS tracer. You can use these to plot out roads etc and upload them to OpenStreetMap. This is a Good Thing ™ because Withernsea isn’t very well mapped at the moment.
In a couple of weeks I will hopefully be a happy mapper and will update on what I have been up to.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:06 am
The Grauniad’s Technology section on Thursdays has been banging on about this for the last year at least, with little joy form OS it must be said. However, it loks like HMG may be getting with the programme to some degree as they’ve just announced some limited scope for doing mash-ups for web projects. Cynical old me thinks holding on till we see the ramifications forownership and availability is a sensible move…