[Talk-GB] Ground truth v legal truth

[Mark Goodge]

On 19/07/2019 13:50, Andy G Wood wrote:
> On Friday, 19 July 2019 13:30:48 BST Martin Wynne wrote:
>> On 19/07/2019 12:55, David Woolley wrote:
>> ...
>>
>>> (As a variation on the last point, one of my pet hates, these days, is
>>> how few houses now have house numbers in the UK.  It make it difficult
>>> to give accurate locations for fly tips
>>
>> Have you seen: https://what3words.com/
> [...]
> 
> "3. Rights in what3words Materials and your licence to use them
Yes, unfortunately W3W is useless for any open data application as it 
exists primarily as a commercial service aimed at the likes of satnav 
manufacturers rather than being available for anyone to use. (It also 
doesn't work globally as the words are language specific).

There are, though, two potentially useful open data coordinate mapping 
systems that can be used by the likes of OSM. One is Mapcode, the other 
is Google's Open Location Code (aka Plus Codes). Both have the advantage 
of not only being entirely free and open to use, but can also be 
generated programmatically from a published algorithm - no need to hook 
into an API, just run some code locally.

Personally, I prefer Mapcode, its codes are more memorable (and, if you 
take the country for granted, can be very short). But I suspect that OLC 
is more likely to gain widespread use simply because it's backed by Google.

https://www.mapcode.com/
https://plus.codes/

Mark