[okfn-discuss] Fwd: [OSGeo-Discuss] Greece follows INSPIRE (and attempts to go OpenGeo?)

Mon Jul 5 18:21:33 UTC 2010

Amazing -- anyone fancy doing a quick write up for blog.okfn.org?

J.

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 5:45 PM, P Kishor <punkish at eidesis.org> wrote:
> Of interest
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Nikos Alexandris <nikos.alexandris at felis.uni-freiburg.de>
> Date: Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM
> Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Greece follows INSPIRE (and attempts to go OpenGeo?)
> To: OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org>
>
>
> Greetings to the list.
>
> (Apologies to the BCC-ed recipients since this might or might not be of your
> interest)
>
> The Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change [1] (yes, you
> read correctly) has decided to (finally) put on a public discussion the law
> that concerns a national infrastructure for (geo)spatial data [2].
>
> It appears to be just a "normalisation" of the current Greek law-framework to
> match (or catch up) the European directive INSPIRE. And indeed, it may be the
> driving force behind it within the current Greek mess (no matter how far this
> mess is real or virtual for the sake of "let's make money").
>
> There are, however, chances to broaden the spectrum of this new law to clarify
> important issues. For example, the license of geospatial data will be provided
> cost-free but with the limitation for non-commercial use. My understanding is
> that this limitation is not only needless but anti-productive in many ways
> [3].
>
> Another example is the focus of the law to be passed more on the
> organisational aspect of the infrastructure (with lots of limitations) and in
> a lesser extent to the social aspect(s) and effects which are of paramount
> importance [4].
>
> Noteworthy to mention is the difficulty when translating special technical
> terms from English in Greek which leads often to non-clear definitions. There
> are various comments on the "Definitions" section [5].
>
> This is just a glimpse of course of the total 31 articles which compose the
> law. All in all, the law is on the right track. Yet, it needs fine tuning to
> prohibit misuse.
>
> One thing that is not positive, at least from my perspective, is(=was) the
> narrow time-window (only 10 days) for which the law is open for public
> comments. Unfortunately, I did not notice this until yesterday. Today
> 30.06.2010 at 23:59 (local time) the comments section will be locked :-(
>
> Nevertheless, this move is a ground-breaker considering how Greek governments
> (re-)acted in the past. It is a clear sign of several people willing to go
> Open(Geo).
>
> Please, readers that (understand Greek and) are interested in this, or readers
> that know people that (understand Greek and) work in this field, comment...
> comment... comment... (...typical Greek, just climb to the top or touch down -
> no in between solutions).
>
> Thank you for your attention,
> Nikos
>
> ---
> [1] <http://www.ypeka.gr/>
> [2] National Infrastructure for Geospatial Data
> <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=757>
>
> [3] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=737>
> [4] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=756>
> [5] <http://www.opengov.gr/minenv/?p=754>
>
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> okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

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