No such thing as a free lunch

To great press and technocrati fanfare, the UK Ordnance Survey freed up its data... somewhat! This was promptly announced on mapperz and Ernest Maples blogs. And commented on as far away as the US west coast by Ed Parsons and Geoff Zeiss currently in America - does location matter?

gotta love Ed's 3D streetview image of Ordnance Survey HQ

It even drew plaudits and humour on twitter:

@Thierry_G: Whilst everyone downloading #OSopendata I'd like to compliment UK Gov & @OrdnanceSurvey on largely sensible outcome for all.

@mpdaly: Where do I point my browser to see the running total of tax revenue accumulating after #OSopendata release?

Last but not least, however, it still raised some questions from uk-government-data-developers@googlegroups.com thread on same:

Shame the line on derived data is still a little blurry, so local authorities can’t release geographical data for free reuse yet,

[CodePoints are] a centre point for every postcode I believe. No polygons.

Not sure what is more appropriate here, Mies vad der Roh's "God is in the details" or the more colloquial "the devil is in the details". On the screenshot below see how many green buttons actually have data (and on the website, Code-Point Open disappeared briefly). Stay tuned...

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