[Freegis-list] RE: Free geographic data

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2002 at 02:27:17AM +0800, YC Nyon wrote:
> 1. I remember there were some party doing up free street data in Canada (i
> think). The aim was for everyone to contribute
> some data that would be available for others. Anyone got the url?

it probably was the Oslo project
	http://www.freemap.nett.org/english/index.html
which is no more active as it seems.

> 2. Regarding to the intention of 'giving' data in exchange for others, will
> it work. www.communityupdate.com is one example.
> A simpler example would be MapXchange at Nationalgeographic.com. These days,
> collecting data is so easy with GPS. If we could
> 'split' the work and get a application to combine all these data, then data
> wouldn't be so difficult to get.
> Like to hear opinions. I am from Southeast Asia, so there is not GDT or
> Navtech.

it is a permanent nuisance to not have Free Vector-Geodata.
Especially for non-US countries.

My dream is a project where a joined efford of networked people
build up and maintain vector data each of their area under GNU GPL or
a GPL-like-for-Geodata License (Richard Stallman already offered
to link us to the FSF license experts). It would be good
to have many Free Software companies in this network that have a
financial benefit from the Free Vector-Geodata, but other interested
parties do make a lot sense as well.

However, without a good fundament (a infrastructure to share the data,
ensure quality etc as well as a comprehensive discussion prior
to the actual work) is unavoidable for a success. And it will
cost quite a lot of money (anything above 200.000 Euro may give
a start, the more the higher are the chances for a success).
Right at the moment I do not see anyone willing to pay for this.
The companies that may make a business out of this are not in
the position to pay for the initial infrastructure.

BTW, Intevation just started a small project on producing a high
quality street map of a german city which will be available
as Free Vector-Geodata. It is in the spirit of my vision, but acutally
serves the simple problem that until now we can not accompany Free GIS
Software tools with interesting european demo-data.
There is no web-site yet (will be announced on this list).
The best part about it is that we are supported by the city
authorities (no money though, but they like the idea).
Maybe this will serve as a reference for further projects.

Best

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
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