A patch local to me (now called Stonebridge Park) proved to be a white triangle on the map (Stonebridge Road at the base, Beacon Hill Rise on the town side & Saint Matthias Road on the 3rd side). It was part of the St Anns-wide redevelopment at the end of the 1960s. 50 years later poor, lost souls were still being discovered in the shrubbery. Like English versions of WW2 Japanese soldiers they had wandered into the new estates & promptly got lost. Most were quickly discovered & gently led out to be rehabilitated in one of the local insane asylums, but some went feral & survived only by being fed by children from the estate (I know this is true as I’m sure I saw a film about it).

Something had to be done. The council renamed the whole triangle of land & gave a contract to Keepmoat to re-redevelop the whole area. That post-dates our Bing imagery. I’ve tried to contact Keepmoat, but they have not returned my calls nor emails. I’ve had better success with the GIS department at the local council.

SK53 (Jerry) gave me a contact to a councillor who is Executive Assistant for Housing and Regeneration, and he passed my email on to the council GIS Team. I got an email back from Laura, saying that my request “sounds very interesting”. Nottingham Council have their own OpenData initiative, but the Ordinance Survey stranglehold on British GIS Data causes Laura to believe that they cannot release anything to OSM.

I spoke to Laura today, and she will approach the OS to discuss releasing info to OSM. I spent most of yesterday collecting info + links which I put in an email to her. I thought that others may find that info useful, so here is the content:

I hope to speak to you on Thursday 28 April 2016. Here is some background info + links on OSM relevant to the topic of your recent email to me, but first the section of that email possibly most relevant to this discussion:-

On 26/04/16 16:48, (GIS Team) wrote:

We also publish individual developments as open data http://www.opendatanottingham.org.uk/dataset.aspx?id=28 with address information but no lat / long / easting / northing as requested by yourself. We are currently restricted on this. We are happy to investigate this further and look to include additional spatial information into the information we already publish but we will need to have discussions with Ordnance Survey about this information as it will be derived from their products and so need permission to publish.

Looking at the building outline / development boundary information data that you have requested as Open Data there are likely to be restrictions to publishing with unrestricted re-use as the data is derived from Ordnance Survey Mastermap products where Ordnance Survey would own the intellectual property rights for this. On many datasets we are starting to publish spatial information even if it is derived from Ordnance Survey data through a legal gateway called ‘presumption to publish’. However we think that the information requested is likely to fall outside of this due to the volumes of data that would be released within a small area, which would not be permitted by Ordnance Survey as this would basically be providing people with a copy of their product. We would welcome the opportunity to talk to you about this, and with further details may be able to assist further so below are my contact details.

You will find detailed licence info on the OSM website:

• short url: osm.org
• full url: http://www.openstreetmap.org/
• general info: http://www.openstreetmap.org/about
• Contact: http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Contact
• Copyright and Licence: http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
• Stats: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats
• (~2,500,000 current registered users worldwide)
• (~25,000 current active contributors)
• History: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/History_of_OpenStreetMap

The relevant extract for using OSM data (which includes the maps) is as follows:-

You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors. If you alter or build upon our data, you may distribute the result only under the same licence … The cartography in our map tiles, and our documentation, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (CC BY-SA).

It should not be necessary to say this, but there is zero (that is £0.00) cost in making use of that data. You will not, therefore, be surprised to hear that OSM maps are increasingly being used by a vast range of bodies worldwide.

In order to be able to maintain the CC BY-SA licence, it is essential that any data imported/entered into the OSM map comes from a non-copyright source. In America all government map data is copyright-free, but in the UK, of course, the OS have maintained a tight grip on the crown-jewels of the financial/copyright map-body. Thus, almost all maps in the UK could NOT be used to derive data for OSM entry. OSM polices this requirement most carefully & has a take-down procedure in place; and yes, it has been used, deleting all data entered by the infringers.

In spite of the paragraph above, Ordnance Survey data has been made available to OSM (see the Licence page, url above). In short, this has been brought about by a change on April 1, 2010 (and following) in the license that the OS apply. Here are relevant URLs then relevant extracts of that info:-

• OS OpenData: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Opendata
• ODL 1.0: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.openstreetmap.region.gb/6516
• OGL v3: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2015/02/were-using-the-open-government-licence-to-encourage-greater-use-of-os-opendata-products/
• Licence issues with OS: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Licensing/Ordnance_Survey_OpenData_License
• Downloads: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html
• Postcodes: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/code-point-open.html

OSM started in the first place because of the difficulty that one cyclist in London had with the very high cost of using OS data (see the ‘History’ url as at top). OSM considers that it is (at least in part) responsible for causing the OS to seriously adopt the Open Government License. Here is the brief history:

• Dec 2009 to March 2010: Government consultation: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Consultation
• April 1st 2010: 1st release; under Open Database License 1.0 (but not Postcode data) (explicitly clarified with OS that this meant that OS data could be used in OSM)
• 2010: Postcode data now released under open licence
• February 2015: OS OpenData license replaced with Open Government Licence (OGL) v3 (no change to OSM usage, as v3 explicitly allows such use)
• 24th March 2015: OS OpenMap, OpenRivers, OpenRoads, OpenNames, StreetView

From all of the above, it should be that there is zero problem in releasing this info for use in OSM.