[Talk-GB] Licences for Highways and PRoW data (Was: C roads again)

[Robert Whittaker (OSM lists)]

On 12 August 2014 20:08, Philip Barnes <phil at trigpoint.me.uk> wrote:
> We have discussed this subject a couple of times and have, I think,
> concluded that displaying the ref (generally only known to local
> government people) on roads that are unsigned is not helpful to the end
> user.
>
> Ignoring the source information for now, but I suspect it is very
> similar to rights of way information in that it is probably derived from
> OS maps.

This may be true for some data used by mappers who didn't carefully
check the licence of their sources. However, data for both Highways
and Public Rights of Way can in principle be available under suitable
licences for use in OSM.

For Public Rights of Way, OS have said they don't claim any rights in
the written Definitive Statements, so all the rights rest with the
authoring Council. If you can persuade them to let you reuse the
document under a suitable licence (e.g. the OGL) then all is good.

As far as street names and numbers are concerned, it is the council
that is the official authority on these. They have to maintain a
written "List of Streets Maintainable at the Public Expense". Again if
you can persuade the council to let you re-use this under a suitable
licence, then all is good.

For more information, see http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/prow/council-docs.html

Both of the datasets mentioned above are written text, rather than
maps or GIS data, so won't be as useful to OSM as the latter would be.
But as Philip suggests, most mapping and GIS data from local councils
is at least partly derived from OS. As a result it will normally only
be available for re-use (if at all) under the OS OpenData Licence --
which LWG have said we can't use in OSM. See
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/os-open-data.html

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker