[geo-discuss] Public Geodata BOF I and II

[Jo Walsh]

dear all,

If anyone else is in Brussels, I scheduled a BOF session on public
geodata for EuroOSCON tomorrow evening (19th), 19:30 through 20:30:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/euos2006/view/e_sess/9793

I have no idea how many people will turn up; my sense of the
conference so far is that it's pretty quiet, marketing-focused.

I ran a similar BOF session at FOSS4G2006 last week, though this
covered a lot of the OSGeo Public Geodata Committee stuff too (all
sides; practical implementation of data exchange; licensing clarity;
data repository planning; + the policy angle). It was well attended
and more people were there with pragmatic questions about upfront open
geodata licensing than any other topic there, i think.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FOSS4G_Public_Geodata_BOF

The more people I talk to who *aren't* in the UK, the more positive
sense I get; that the Council is in fact likely to back down; in which
case the implementing rules phase really is going to be pushed ahead
by open source GIS. Certainly at a local / municipal / departmental
level there is a lot more data 'leaking out' - all the Spanish
cadastral information via Web Feature Service, etc - it's just not
being indexed and redistributed. The catalog/search specs are not
answering the problem, and data providers seem to have this "well, you
just need to look at the GetCapabilities" attitude - like putting a
HTML file on a webserver but not linking to it or from it, and
magically expecting Google to find it just because you told someone
about it down the pub. But this will change soon.

Having seen Benjamin briefly earlier, he says this Commission opinion /
whitepaper / whatever it is is due for release in a couple of days and
that would be a good opportunity to synchronise a press release.

Interesting times - that perhaps it is not so bad from the inside as
it looks from the outside. There's an INSPIRE related RFP which passed
a couple of weeks ago and another one on its way for November - it
probably makes sense to try to get into this loop - I wonder if
Markus is already connected through the Open Source Geospatial SDIC.

cheers,


jo