[Talk-GB] Natural England Data

[Rob Nickerson]

Urrgg.. It was [0] that all Natural England "open" datasets (with the
exception of Local Nature Reserves), were plain OGL licensed and could
therefore be used. Looking again, it seems like NE have now added that
annoying line at the top of the OGL licence that seems be be raising a few
eyebrows:

"The same attribution statements must be contained in any sub-licences of
the Information that you grant, together with a requirement that any
further sub-licences do the same."

This must be due to the Ordnance Survey as Natural England have not added
this line to the NE non-GIS OGL licence [1]. Frustratingly this is a matter
of much debate and is (hopefully) being addressed by both Office of Public
Sector Information (the OS's regulator) and the Open Data User Group - slow
progress I'm afraid.

I would recommend checking for the individual licence included within each
dataset's zip folder. If it's standard OGL then I say go for it :-) As with
any external dataset, a straight import should be discussed on the mailing
list first. You should also note that not all of the data is appropriate to
OSM.

Rob

[0]
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120404182221/http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/copyright/
[1]
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/open-government-licence-NE_tcm6-30744.pdf

p.s Please also register your concerns with the Office of Public Sector
Information. Use the magic words "I wish to raise a formal complaint
against Ordnance Survey" as this will ensure that your comments get logged
and included in any stats OPSI can reference when leaning on the OS.
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