[Talk-GB] Searching UK addresses on the osm.org website

Dan Avis davis65536 at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Mar 12 11:57:27 GMT 2012


Phil,

It's been at least partly freed:

http://www.freepostcodes.org.uk/

I'm not talking about importing them, because I understand some people are leery of the potential copyright issues, and because it's not an "on the ground" source. That's fine; I'm side-stepping that question (hopefully!) and instead asking: Can the osm.org search box be updated to return results from that complete list?

I do make heavy use of postcodes for geolocation, and they work pretty well for my needs. They're short, and they're usually accurate enough for me to drive to an address. They're also very very common, and many people will expect the OSM site to behave the same as e.g. Google Maps if you input a postcode. I know there are arguments against using postcodes, but no customers of mine would bat an eyelid if I asked them for their postcode; they'd look at me funny if I asked them for a gridref.


cheers




>________________________________
> From: "phil at trigpoint.me.uk" <phil at trigpoint.me.uk>
>To: "talk-gb at openstreetmap.org" <talk-gb at openstreetmap.org> 
>Sent: Monday, 12 March 2012, 11:50
>Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Searching UK addresses on the osm.org website
> 
>
>I believe that the royal mail postcode database is copyright and so importing such data would probably be a no no.
>Until recently I was a Ramblers Membership srcretary, and the problems caused by postcode allocation of new members, in particular around the county boundary led me to believe that postcodes are a very goog way of delivering the mail and are totally useless for any other purpose.
>If we need a shortcode for entering an address how about a good old fashioned grid-reference?
>Phil
>
>On 12/03/2012 10:50 Dan Avis wrote:
>
>Hi,
>
>
>Without wishing to descend into a license debate... (I've seen previous posts suggesting that *importing* the postcode database is at least contentious)
>
>
>Is it possible to get the osm.org search box to return results of the full postcode database? The data's been geocoded already, and it wouldn't have to be imported in order for that to work.
>I typically use only the postcode to find addresses, so it'd be handy.
>
>
>cheers
>
>
>
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