[Talk-GB] Postcode update

[Robert Whittaker (OSM)]

On 10 April 2012 09:20, Chris Hill <osm at raggedred.net> wrote:
> IMHO there never was a problem. OS said they couldn't speak for Royal Mail,
> which is fair enough, but it doesn't mean there is an actual problem.
> Codepoint Open now features on the data.gov.uk website as something that
> uses the Open Government Licence, and a little web app using OSM and
> Codepoint Open data is shown there too.

Have you got a link for Code-Point Open being available under the UK
Open Government License? If it is indeed available under OGL, then I
would agree with you that there isn't a problem.

However, certainly for the version you can download from the Ordnance
Survey website, the license is not OGL, but OGL plus an additional
perpetual attribution requirement [1]. My understanding is that this
additional attribution requirement is not compatible with ODbL, and
that's why LWG had to get special permission from OS to include things
derived from other OS OpenData products in OSM. That permission was
granted by OS for everything except Code-Point Open (which they didn't
own all the rights for) [2]. OS then said they needed to consult Royal
Mail about Code-Point [2]. From the message [3] relayed by Michael
Collinson, it's not entirely clear exactly what discussions there were
between OS and Royal Mail. But from the wording of [3] I would guess
that OS did consult Royal Mail, and Royal Mail refused to to waive the
perpetual attribution requirement. This would then leave Code-Point
Open incompatible with ODbL.

Whatever happened between OS and Royal Mail, [3] seems quite clear
that LWG's view is that the license for Code-Point Open is not
compatible with ODbL, and thus it can't be added to OSM. So whatever
your personal views on the licenses, you shouldn't contribute data
derived from Code-Point Open to OSM. If anyone wants to distribute
Code-Point Open derived data themselves under ODbL (or a similar
license) then that's obviously up to them, but it would be courteous
to the OSM community if anyone doing so made LWG's position on the
incompatibility of their data clear, to prevent innocent mappers using
the (potentially tainted) data to contribute to OSM.

Robert.

[1] http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/docs/licences/os-opendata-licence.pdf
[2] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2011-July/011995.html
[3] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2012-January/012688.html

-- 
Robert Whittaker