[Gllug] Petition to open London government geodata?

[Alain Williams]

On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 10:45:20AM +0000, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> 
> Hi folks.
> 
> For some background, have a look at this:
> http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/user/XSLT_REQUEST?language=en&itdLPxx_view=AddToWebsite2
> 
> And then try actually USING their stupid site.  Short-timeout sessions. 
> Badly implemented maps (PDF ferfuxxake, and separate for each leg of the
> journey).  Much too optimistic assumptions about changeovers between
> different transport modes and lines (recommending a route that takes
> three buses which in theory gets you there 5 minutes earlier than a tube
> route).  All sorts of stupidity going on here.
> ...

The first thing that you see:

	By providing a hyperlink to the TfL website (or associated site) you are agreeing to abide by TfL's Terms and Conditions. Acceptance
	of these terms also extends to TfL keeping records of your links, which will be held in accordance with the TfL Privacy statement for
	periodic inspection and tracking purposes.

	Third parties must not link to any other service, page or asset connected with the TfL family of websites, or extend linking
	permissions to any other party without the express permission of TfL. 

This is the deep linking issue, my take is that they can't enforce this. What does the list think ?

> Now imagine if this data were readily available through free, open feeds.
>  Then What about the things you haven't even thought of doing.  For
> inspiration try [1]BBC Backstage to see some of the cool shit people are
> doing with data the BBC are making available.  Or some of the [2]cool
> [3]shit people have been doing, probably illegally and without any help
> from TFL using screenscraping; and some of the [4]really cool shit
> people have been doing with Google Maps and the like.
> 
> TFL has a huge amount of really useful data at their fingertips.  Travel
> routes (road, rail, tube, bus, bicycle) and timetables.  Service running
> information.  Think about what we could do with this!
> 
> So what do people think about a petition to Ken to open up this data? 
> The public benefits fo this data being freely available would _vastly_
> outweigh whatever probably puny amount of money TFL are making by
> licensing this data to others.  How could such a petition be pitched to
> non-geeks?

I suspect that an argument based on cost would be more effective: it come up
with a case that lots of services benefitial to red ken could be produed at
little/no cost to him.

-- 
Alain Williams
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd.
Linux Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/

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