[Talk-GB] Postcodes map

[John McKerrell]

On 29 Mar 2007, at 02:10, Laurence Penney wrote:

> John McKerrell wrote:
>>>> I've made a slippy map showing postcode areas:
>>>> http://beerwarmer.randomjunk.co.uk/osm/postcodes/
>>> This is awesome. If you need hosting for this do ask us
>>> (webmaster at npemap.org.uk) or OSM (on dev.osm?). I'd love to have  
>>> this
>>> featured on the NPEmap web site.
>> Agreed, this is really nice. Do you think you could pull in the  
>> OSM  database as an alternative source of postcode data? I'm not  
>> sure if  many others are doing it but I've been entering the first  
>> half of a  postcode for as many roads as possible so that could  
>> really improve  Liverpool's coverage. I notice one area nearby is  
>> missing from your  map at the moment as there were no roads there  
>> when the NPE map was  made!
>
> It seems likely that beerintheevening get their address data from a  
> tainted source, so all my postal_codes attached to pubs should  
> probably be deleted. :-(
>
Though I'm a big fan of collecting postcodes, and generally get them  
from roadsigns, I'm not sure there really is a non-tainted source of  
postcode data. The postcodes are decided by the post office aren't  
they? I have heard that the base data is copyrighted, it's not like  
you can derive a postcode from any other source, e.g. if it was some  
sort of hash of the road name and location. Perhaps the first part is  
decided by the council and the last part by the post office, I don't  
know. I'd be interested if anyone had any solid knowledge on the  
subject?

John