[Freegis-list] free gis data

[Jo Walsh]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 08:32:19PM +0200, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> Somewhat paradoxical situations, due to unclear ideas about licences and 
> freedom (and perhaps citizenship), in my view. This is why I believe a white 
> paper would be useful to clarify the situation.
> It could then submitted to the various Inspire committees.

This sounds great. Would this paper need to go out under some
organisational framework in order to be taken seriously? I'd like to
try and assemble some Americanadian open geodata 'success stories'
too.

Here, we have a small 'coalition' of people working on free/open GIS
projects, listed at http://okfn.org/geo/ ... have made notes
towards something like a set of 'manifesto', ideally to get different
interest groups to sign up to, while trying not to become divisive... 
http://okfn.org/wiki/WhyOpenGeodata

i've heard laments about how "one-man-band" organisations, even
collections of them, are percieved as irrelevant, neglible in Brussels;
also that policy voice has to be transnational. 

Perhaps there is a role for a virtual 'euro open geodata' coalition
to which different organisations can sign on as signatories /
approvers of such a white paper... could it make sense to run this at
intevation or through the FFII?


-jo