[geo-discuss] Texts adopted by Parliament: INSPIRE

[Jo Walsh]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 12:18:25AM +0100, Saul Albert wrote:
> > See in particular http://tinyurl.com/oh38d , "to ask what plans OS has
> > for making public data available to the public". The written answer he
> Well found Jo. 

Actually Chris Corbin found this the other week on EGIP, i just
re-found it; the archives at http://egip.jrc.it/ are pretty raw. 
Oh, a google helped; http://egip.jrc.it/200606/1699.html gives a
detailed breakdown of how much public subsidy, voted by Parliament and
through NIMSA, OS received per annum since it became a trading fund.  
Read the whole thing and weep, and then note Chris's remarks that this
is the tip of the iceberg of what can be found. Meanwhile OS is
lobbying through MEPs for the Council position (no free public view, 
IP constraints *even on metadata*) as INSPIRE goes to conciliation.

http://egip.jrc.it/200606/1712.html - overview of the speeches
http://egip.jrc.it/200606/1713.html - breakdown of the votes
http://egip.jrc.it/200606/1714.html - PR and 'next steps'

(Chris has been doing a fantastic job of INSPIRE tracking, too.) 

> I know how precise the wording used by parliamentarians can be, and how
> infuriating a brush-off like this is..
> 
> Does anyone know what kinds of things *do* recieve 'funds voted directly
> by Parliament'. Difficult territory :/

Yeah, i guess you're right on the splitty semantics; I think in this
case there is a technical term 'voted funds' which fits NIMSA, but I'm
not sure. Ed Parsons came out with the same line when Steve
interviewed him for a podcast, a few months back. 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Opengeodata.org

I just, you know, one can only spend so much time FUD-fighting; if the
Guardian's recent PR deluge is not helping wake the Treasury / DCLG up
to this debate, then I am not sure what can, in the face of such
relentless functional wordgames on behalf of our representatives.

In the meantime, we get the positive-statement strategies; 
clear lines like the Open Geodata Manifesto, the PGL and other 
model licenses, the free licenses for state-collected data that 
are coming out of Canada now; we get efforts like openstreetmap 
demonstrating that "there will, if necessary, be a grass-roots 
remapping"; we can work with sympathetic third parties such as
OSGeo and telascience to build "proof of value" of open access to
state-collected geodata. 

And Europe is a huge place, there are 24 other places to push, and I
fervently hope that OS and the UK govnt's policy stances are way out
on the extreme end, and that a worst-case INSPIRE can be something
that doesn't preclude open access in future, while guaranteeing us
more than we have now.

As far as i know, Benjamin *did* manage to get a hardcopy of the open
letter updated to include the rapporteur's statements out to MEPs the
Friday before last, before the plenary. I have no idea what the
timeline is likely to be on conciliation/third reading, and it would
be good to find this out as soon as plausible - will the rapporteur know?

(Apologies for my total radio silence over the last week; I was held
prisoner in Castle Autodesk, then blackmailed by means of illicit
phonecam materials into attending Where2.0, at which point, the power
supply connector on my laptop motherboard died. It was liberating!)


jo