Ordnance Survey releases map data free

[Redrobes]

Ahh it seems the waters are indeed muddied... To be honest I don't think I understand the full implications of this yet but AFAICT it looks like its being opened up somewhat but in some limited and unspecified licensing manner. Which if you ask me is pretty much par for the course with our gov. Anyway, you read it and see what you think - then post

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04...ing_agreement/

Sounds like post codes are not on the cards tho which gets a mneh out of me cos google can do them. Its being able to host or post OS maps that I want to think about. That and derive data from them to use and post. Personally I agree with the sentiment that there's more to be gained from tax out of new products than the current £20m profits at mo.

[Redrobes]

I know this is a bit of a thread resurrection but I had a link from some place saying that they got some data from ordnance survey opendata pages. Well I just been on there....

OS OpenData products | Business and government | Ordnance Survey

...and its most definitely live now. I think it might have been for some time but I can say this. I have downloaded the whole UK 50m DEM in ascii so the data is open and available now. I am going to spend an hour or two writing the decoder for it and will post a pic or two later on.

But WOW even after the download zip came through I still didn't think it really was the right data but it definitely is the whole UK at 50m spacing. Though you need to abide by the license, that license is quite open including commercial use. Its a lot like CC with share alike and attribution. Amazing work by the OS team to release this.

Edit: Oh yeah I recall where I saw it - you can get the whole UK on minecraft now. I thought for a while they might have had some kind of private deal with them to use the data so was pretty astounded when I realized it was open to all.