On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:20 PM, SteveC <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jan 18, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Andy Allan wrote: >> This isn't me saying that I disapprove of a commercial company giving >> away a whole load of raster maps for free, I'm saying I don't think >> the government should be funding it. > > Okay so you feel rasters are a special case, different to vectors. > > But given the choice between > > a) giving away the rasters and OS losing 9 million quid a year, or > > b) selling them as they do now > > surely (a) is better because it frees up the maps, provides a better platform > for innovation and weakens the OS? And I say weaken, because a weaker OS is > far and away more likely to be more clueful about licensing and so on than it > is now. And if it isn't, then a weaker OS is far better for the british > geodata industry in that it will allow more competition. > > I think the point we're disagreeing on is that you would see that 9 million > quid as filled in by central government raising their funding, whereas I'd > expect the budget to remain static (I can't see central government upping OS > at the expense of hospitals and schools right now) and OS to have to cut > other activities or start other for-profit activities to compensate.
I take your point on the "least worst" thing, but Page 11 of the consultation shows, for both Option 2 and Option 3 (Option 1 being "as-is") that the funding would increase to compensate. "Significant funding from government would be required." "Government would provide funding for the maintenance and delivery of these datasets." "This option would require substantial changes to the existing sources of revenue, at the heart of which is a shift towards government paying more." Cheers, Andy _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
