Just to play devil's advocate here, what's wrong with the free Ordnance Survey
API (other than its inscrutable JSON responses)? I can imagine that it will be
held up defensively by any ministers contacted by this campaign.
http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/doc/postcodeunit/SO164GU
Is it that it's:
too incomplete (it doesn't resolve to a street name, just lat/long, country,
district and ward),
not authoritative (as in, Royal Mail is the original source of post codes),
not downloadable,
or that the Open Government License it's released under is insufficiently open?
Something else?
I used it commercially and non-commercially to provide lat/long lookup for
postcodes. It's been pretty good.
Secondly, "The Royal Mail can’t be allowed to exploit this information for
commercial gain" is pretty contentious (I'm not sure that's intentional). I
think it would be better to argue that Royal Mail shouldn't be able to withhold
this data. After all why shouldn't Royal Mail build profitable (or at least
self-sustaining) services on top of open data? We'll certainly be trying to!
--
Matt Robinson
https://lazycat.org/
On 4 Feb 2013, at 13:22, Owen Blacker <[email protected]> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Javier Ruiz <[email protected]>
> Date: 4 February 2013 13:06
> Subject: [Okfn-en] Help open up the postcode dataset
> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
>
> […]
> Data about UK addresses is still locked down, unavailable to the general
> public and only accessible with an expensive and complex annual license from
> the Royal Mail. Innovators are being discouraged from putting this core
> reference data to creative use. British businesses and public services have
> to cope with the unnecessary burden of applying and paying for access to
> location data.
>
> The Open Data Users Group, a governmental advisory group, has just released a
> report calling for a public and open National Address Dataset to replace the
> restrictive database that we have now.
> […]
> Location data is a critical national asset. The Royal Mail can’t be allowed
> to exploit this information for commercial gain. Instead, the government
> should make this data freely available as part of our national public
> infrastructure.
>
> Ministers will try to hide behind the argument that these issues only concern
> a minority of technical experts. This just isn’t true. We need your help to
> show them that British citizens are well aware of the crucial importance of
> this data and are ready to be vocal about it.
>
>
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