[Talk-GB] Office of National Statistics data

Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) robert.whittaker+osm at gmail.com
Sun Nov 4 14:47:30 GMT 2012


On 30 October 2012 19:24, Chris Hill <osm at raggedred.net> wrote:
> The UK Office for National Statistics has released some data [1] under the
> Open Government licence [2] . I've extracted the postcode data from it and
> created a tile overlay which can help find a postcode for a building in GB,
> excluding Northern Ireland. More info is at http://onspd.raggedred.net
> including using the tiles layers in Potlatch 2 & JOSM.
>
> [1]
> http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/products/postcode-directories/-nspp-/index.html
> [2] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/

While [1] says "ONS Intellectual Property in the postcode products is
supplied under Open Government Licence terms" that only refers to
ONS's IP rights, and doesn't say anything about anyone else's IP
rights...

If we follow the "licenses" link to [3] we find why there is this
strange wording:

"Postcode products: The ONS postcode directories are subject to the
Open Government Licence, and Ordnance Survey OpenData Licence."

So it's not correct to say that the data has been released under the
Open Government License. Unfortunately, it looks like we're back to
the same problem we had with CodePoint Open: The ONS dataset
presumably contains IP from Royal Mail under the OS OpenData License.
When LWG enquired a while ago, the answer came back that we weren't
allowed to use CodePoint Open under the OS OpenData License, because
we hadn't got permission from Royal Mail. I don't see that this new
dataset is going to be any different. But if you think there's a case
to be made for being able to use it this time, I think you'll need to
run it by LWG first and get their approval.

Sorry to have to throw a spanner in the works here,

Robert.


[3] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/beginner-s-guide/licences/index.html

-- 
Robert Whittaker



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