[talk-au] ODbL data.gov.au permission granted

[Grant Slater]

The Licensing Working Group has obtained explicit special permission
to incorporate geographic datasets from data.gov.au in the
OpenStreetMap project database published under any free and open
license, including ODbL, provided that

a) we provide primary attribution in a reasonable manner ( currently
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/Attribution ), and
b) that we explicitly list there each dataset used to give useful
feedback within the Australian government on how folks are using open
data.

We have been careful to point out that (under ODbL) we are not asking
folks who make visual maps from OpenStreetMap to provide secondary
attribution to each and every contributor, so would not be in
compliance with the CC-BY Australia 2.5 and 3.0 license their data is
normally provided under. They have raised no objection to this.

The LWG would like to publicly thank data.gov.au both for providing
open geographic data and for providing this permission.


The rest of this email is about individual datasets.

We have already updated the OpenStreetMap Attribution page here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Attribution#Australian_government_public_information_datasets

You will see two lists.  The first are datasets that are definitely
from data.gov.au. The second is a list we are unsure of and will be
working to contact individual agencies now we have the basic principle
in place.

The most useful set on the second list is the Australian Bureau of
Statistics suburbs dataset. Regretfully, the user who imported the
data will not accept the new CTs for the ABS2006 import account and we
respect his wishes. However, there appears to be a later 2011 version
of the same data (needs confirming) at http://data.gov.au/4105 and he
has agreed to make the import program available. We suggest that the
old set be deleted completely and replaced. This means that some
individual local-knowledge tweaks may be lost, so some discussion
might be needed.

The Weather Station data is also imported under an account that has
declined the new terms. If anyone is interested in re-importing it, we
will be happy to approach the Bureau of Meteorology; it very likely
needs separate permission.

And that leaves these others where we are not yet sure exactly where
they came from:
 * Queensland police stations
 * NSW Geographic Names Board places (importer contacted)
 * Queensland national parks, state forests and conservation areas

Kind regards
Grant
On behalf of LWG.