[geo-discuss] last overlook before getting the petition Out There

Mon Feb 13 21:07:59 UTC 2006

What i would like to run with is at:
http://publicgeodata.org/petition/ 
Not thoroughly tested yet. Unless anything show-stopping happens or i
get any world-changing commentary that needs to be taken very seriously,
would like to remove the big red DISCLAIMER and start pushing it about
in public, tomorrow morning (around 1200 UTC)

Benjamin did a great job spiffing up the CSS and i more or less made
it look the same as he intended. I have ran through and tested it but
would appreciate it if a few other people could go through the sign-up
process, do the same and offer any last-minute feedback in privmail about
weirdnesses in the layout, and *especially* any impenetrability in the
wording. I tried to keep it as accessible an overview of the issues as
possible; something that will maximise the number and nature of people
who are prepared to sign up to it. (here i am thinking family and
friends, other technical and social interest groups, that's who i plan
to send my own announcements round to).

We could have gone into more technical detail about problems with
INSPIRE in the petition itself - talked about charging for data
actually often being more expensive to do than give it away; about how
building an unnecessary but mandatory ecommerce / DRM infrastructure
for "viewing" geodata is just missing the point of how the data is
used and how modern technical standards work; how Article 14 has
shrunk to cover less of Article 11.1.a-e over time, in the direction
of reinforcing the unavailability or removal of more data from the
public domain.

But that would also tend to reinforce the impression that this is a
niche issue that a lot of technical professionals are upset about
because it creates an impedance for them to live their lives
interestingly. Though this *is* the case, the impact and implications
of INSPIRE are a lot bigger than that.

if you think something is Really Wrong or Very Much Missing in the
petition wording, please holler out ASAP. there's plenty more work to
be done research-whacking on the wiki, gathering testimonials etc but
it's important to get the petition alive and rolling now.

-jo