[Openstreetmap] [lawrence at altlawforum.org: [Commons-Law] Proposal to abolish Crown Copyright]

[Jo Walsh]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 05:54:19PM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Would it help OSM to have a political party such as the Greens backing it
> > on a specific agenda? Sounds like they might be amenable to the argument.
> 
> If I thought that a political movement could improve society, I 
> might have been in politics and not a programmer.

This is quite nice: a Google Maps mashup as part of a political
campaign. http://www.advocatesforrasiej.com/wefixnyc/

Rasiej is a former technology adviser to the Democrats, who's now
running as an independent for 'Public Advocate' in New York, at the
centre of his campaign is universal network access and open access to
all civic information.

Perhaps at the local level there *is* a chance to improve practises
and processes, and also to get local government map data and spatial
information into the public domain; if centralised IP practises don't
compel them to commercialise this information and restrict access to
it because it has 'value'.

I don't think this is impossibly idealistic; the fact that these
issues are moving into the mainstream *is* reassuring. 


-jo