[Openstreetmap] Postcodes

[Tom Carden]

David Cantrell wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 05:11:15PM +0100, Tom Carden wrote:
>>
>>It's great that it's there, but can we use it for OpenStreetMap?  My 
>>instinct is no, because all the possible sources are under copyright and it 
>>must have been scraped from somewhere.
> 
> Or it might have been compiled in the same way as my openpostcodes was,

Is your openpostcodes database available anywhere?  Is it something that 
makes freethepostcode.org obsolete/irrelevant?  Could freethepostcode 
contribute in any way?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=openpostcodes

"Your search - openpostcodes - did not match any documents."

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=openpostcodes

"We didn't find any Web pages matching the following criteria:
     * Containing this query term: openpostcodes"

http://search.msn.co.uk/results.aspx?q=openpostcodes

"We couldn't find any results containing openpostcodes."

Similarly for openpostcode, open postcode, open postcodes, "open 
postcode" and "open postcodes"...

> which is the same as how this new thing is.  

I assume that for whatever reason, it didn't work?  What can be learnt 
from the way you went about it?  Anything to avoid?

> Not that this matters to
> people who just want to say "no".

Can you elaborate a bit?  I'm certainly not someone who just wants to 
say "no".  I just don't want to see people risk the integrity of OSM, 
and importing a database which has no clear source and no license terms 
would do exactly that.

To refer to your geowanking post - this isn't lawyer-wankery, this is 
just being careful.  In Steve's case, it's very much "shoot first ask 
questions later", which seems to be becoming his trademark :)

Regards,

Tom.