Ordnance Survey to release data, buy OSM

In a deal we’ve been working on for months, OS have agreed to release their street network ITN data for the whole UK immediately under a CC-BY-SA license. This is fantastic news and furthers OSMs cause greatly. This data will begin to be integrated on a town-by-town basis immediately.

In addition, following OSs decision to suspend a data captcher contract we have agreed that future OS data captcher will be made using a modified version of JOSM and OSM server code, to be delivered by a new division within OS which has taken ownership of all OSM server code and data. While realising that the change of data ownership may offend OSM contributors, it follows extensive debate on the legal-talk mailing list and discussions with OS lawyers and we feel that you can’t copyright geodata anyway.

So long, and thanks for all the maps.