[open-government] GIS Data and Licenses

Fri Sep 9 20:07:09 UTC 2011

2011/9/9 Brian Gryth <briangryth at gmail.com>:
> Good morning all,
>
> I am researching the release of GIS data with or without a licensing
> agreement.  Two questions:
>
> 1) Can anyone point me to a government that releases/posts GIS data for
> download with no or minimal restriction?

There's a bunch of geodata that the UK government has released without
restriction [1] and of course things like TIGER [2] in the US are
freely released (there's a bunch more geodata on http://data.gov/ --
almost all Federal though I would imagine).

[1]: http://thedatahub.org/package/ordnance_survey
[2]: http://thedatahub.org/package/tiger-geodata

> 2) Can anyone point me to examples of GIS licensing agreement?

Are you looking for any licensing agreement or an open one? If an open
one just use a standard open data license like the Open Data Commons'
ones: <http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/> -- there is nothing very
special about GIS data in this regard (and if you are concerned I
would note that the Open Database License
<http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/> was drafted with a lot of
import from the OpenStreetMap community).

Regards,

Rufus

> Any example will be helpful, but examples within the United State would be
> best.  I am dealing with a city in the US.