Goal 2
Increase the use of Ordnance Survey data
It is recognised that the framework under which Ordnance Survey prices and licenses its data and services has become complex and unwieldy. Working with Shareholder Executive and OPSI, this is being comprehensively reviewed as part of the drive to improve focus on the customer.
The overall aim of the work is to make data more easily available and encourage innovation and competition in the market.
Under the new framework, Ordnance Survey will continue to license its data both indirectly and directly to end customers. Partners will continue to have appropriate licences so that the price they pay reflects the market value of their end product. However, Ordnance Survey wishes to re-examine the boundary between the different licensing routes to check they best support the current market and rationalise the suite of licences available to partners.
In particular, Ordnance Survey expects over time to offer many more products to commercial partners so that they can distribute them to end customers in parallel to Ordnance Survey itself. It is also examining how to give greater flexibility over the rights customers have to use data internally in their own business and better facilitate the use of data within the public sector that contains shared public sector intellectual property.
Ordnance Survey is also reviewing all of its licence documents with the aim of making them shorter and easier to understand.
The pricing structure that accompanies the new licensing framework will be transparent and reflect the work that is being undertaken to reduce costs across the organisation.
Ordnance Survey recognises that there is a desire for rapid change to the current system. However, it wants to ensure that it takes decisions about its pricing and licensing model with a thorough understanding of the impact it will have – on customers, Ordnance Survey and others in the market. For that reason, comments are very welcome here on how the licensing framework should be reformed as part of the new strategy.
It is expected that work on a new pricing and licensing framework and the plan for its rollout will be complete by October 2009. Ordnance Survey has asked the Office of Public Sector Information, together with Shareholder Executive, to be involved in the work from today to ensure that its thinking is independently challenged.
Comments and suggestions on these points and any other related areas that you feel should be addressed as part of this review are welcomed.
Anthony
As a commercial user, the derived data issue is not our primary concern. That being said, when sub-licensing data from third parties it always creates some uncertainty as to whether those third parties have obtained an appropriate license from OS. From our perspective we need permission to do what we want to do at an affordable price.
Currently, if there is not a specific use contract that covers the use, it is somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to obtain a license.. Also slighty different uses for the same data sometimes entails entering into another specific use contract and for that slightly different use completely different royalty provisions may apply.
Finally, (as a commercial user) whatever problems there are with the licensing of small scale date, these (used to? I am five years out of date) pale into insignificance in comparison to the “joys” of trying to license large scale OS data.
Nothing but good can come from the sharing of experience of such licensing issues. So let me know what you think of the following approach.
As noted in my previous email I suggested that what is needed is a permissive and consistent licensing regime. Allowing both commerical and not-for-profit licensees to do what they want to do on sensible terms. One of the permissions (perhaps as a fixed price add on?) required in such a license would be to extract a reasonable proportion of the data and sub-license without restriction, another is that OS should not limit types of reproduction (paper, online, plates, mugs …. ) and royalties payable should be on flat rate based on the area of mapping reproduced.
@Dan: I quite agree with you about reasonable licences and fees. I have no problem with OS charging royalties on the direct use of their maps (raster or vector). Or even charging royalties for maps derived from their map data.
However OS licences, even if they were free, still control what you are allowed to do with the smallest amount of derived data, which covers single points and lines: nothing that could be called a “map”.
Even if a licence to display an OS-derived bicycle route on the internet was completely free, it would still be against OS license terms to display it using the Google Maps API, for example (OS think that Google’s Terms of Use aren’t compatible with OS’s licence).
Of course, back in the real world, people are unaware of this problem, and are using Google Maps for UK locations all over the place (including the Met Police’s famous Crime Map)!
Anthony
Your point re derived data is understood and accepted.
As many existing data sets have complex provenances, as a licensee it is often impossible to know whether third party licensors have obtained all the necessary consents from the OS.
Perhaps the solution would need to be in two parts.
First a permission to create and sub license OS derived data (and permit others to do likewise) going forward; and second some way of mopping up all those datasets created before the new license came into being. An amnesty (for license holders) would be one way to do this.
As noted in my earlier posting, it seems to me that while some of the overall concerns of commercial and not-for-profit users will be different, the derived data point is a perfect example of an OS licensing policy doesn’t work for anyone.
I’ve just paid for some mapping software because I want to print a walking route . I can enter the route and print it, but the suppliers say that because of licensing restrictions (presumably on use of derived data), there is no facility to copy the map as an image and paste it into a document with a commentary for use by friends.
As an end user and tax payer this is incredibly frustrating. This is at least the third time I’ve contributed to the funding of this map - once via my taxes, again when I bought a paper map to go walking around the area and now when I bought the software. And I still can’t undertake what I perceive to be the most trivial of digital uses.
Will this position change with the new regime? Even if it does I can bet things will move at glacial pace. Too little, too late.
Welcome news. Get on with it!
The Agreements
OS Licensing terms are among the most complex and onerous data supply arrangements in the UK. For most applications a reseller has o sign up to the Framework Partner License which is very long (ours is over 30 pages), legally complex and significantly biased towards the rights of the OS over the Partner. A further agreement (such as a Specific Use License) then sits under this and details the specific applications permitted, royalties payable etc. Again this is long and complex.
Some products, such as Addresspoint, require yet another agreement. There are a good number of clauses that would be seen as unreasonable. For example the OS has rights to change specifications and pricing at relatively short notice.
In terms of negotiation, OS have always used the level playing field argument to avoid any negotiation on the contract terms.
Minimum Royalties have historically put off smaller resellers though they have recently been reduced.
The contracts operate over a fixed period (typically two years) and the OS has extensive rights to alter or terminate. This makes it difficult for resellers to give their customers long-term certainty – many customers want to be sure that a reseller can supply the application for 3-5 years.
The lack of any proper value based pricing severely limits the use of some data sets. For example, there are many components within the excellent MasterMap product which could be much more widely used if they could be extracted and used in derived products, where the MasterMap data itself is not seen but it adds to the usefulness of the product. The use of MasterMap in such applications is undermined by the lack of any differential pricing to cover derived products.
Ordnance Survey should stop trying to second guess the market place via specific use licences. A standard licence should be made available which states what can or cannot be done with the data but not how. The costs a reseller pays for the licence should be dependent on how the data is being used.
This should result in a single licence for all with a menu of costs which apply to the specific use.
The OS propose that “partners will continue to have appropriate licences so that the price they pay reflects the market value of their end product.” Where OS is a dominant supplier (true of most of its areas of operation), this is likely to remain a problem.
The EU Commission which has been reviewing the behaviour of PSI providers and the market for PSI re-use http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/swd_070509/re-usepsi_sec(2009).pdf states that “public sector bodies should be transparent on the calculation basis they apply in terms of abiding by the upper limit for charges set by the Directive [ie cost of the product plus a reasonable margin]. Calculations should not be based on the total turnover of the public sector body, but on the individual databases or items concerned.”
OS currently appear to bundle their products and services so that others cannot easily compete and distribute their products. There is evidence of product cross-subsidy and discrimination. As long as these issues are unresolved then innovation will be restricted and the commercial playing-field potentially unfair. It is the costs that need to be transparent, not the pricing. The principles arising from the Shareholder Executive Trading Fund Assessment state that different parts of the business should be accounted for separately. This does not appear to be envisaged by OS.
The OFT has expressed concerns which are not dissimilar: “licensing arrangements are restrictive, prices are not always linked to costs….” Etc and recommended that the PSI producers should “use proportionate cost-related pricing and to account separately for their monopoly activities and their value added activities so that [OS] can demonstrate that they are providing and pricing information fairly and in a non-discriminatory manner.”
This does not seem to be what OS now proposes to do.
There must be one type of licence for all public sector users (to facilitate data sharing between them) across all devolved adminstrations. It will only take one major emergency for our industry to look very foolish and culpable….
The OPSI click licence should be adopted for all licencing. After all, is OS data not Crown Copyright?
I do understand the issues with derived data, in particular from OS MasterMap, but it is currently stifling wider adoption and innovation (pls see my comment for goal 1 that would aim to remove this problem). If there has to be any at all, guidance must be clear and simple so I can understand it without legal advice. Yes, that simple!
I am seeing more and more problems with derived data within the public sector when they want to share their data with non-PGA/MSA partners. The current outcome on this is increased cost for the public sector purse.
It is really important that both the costs of data and the cost/effort of administering the data and its licensing are reduced. It can be difficult to capture all instances of data use for royalty returns. It would be better to be enabling and to simply permit internal business use fully – or to have a type of partner license with no need for royalty returns because the licence antipates the type of level of use. This would be immensely valuable for the voluntary sector where the costs associated with managing licensing cannot be passed onto customers. Currently, the pricing of Ordnance Survey data puts data beyond the reach of most average or even large charities. All charities need equal access to data but this is not currently possible, so within the sector there are huge barriers to interoperability and the ability of the voluntary sector to provide its services to and alongside the public sector. Within the environmental sector, there needs to be support for activities that support Public sector activities. For example, the National Biodiversity Network provides access to wildlife data for the UK. Public Agencies use these records to inform decision-making. It is largely the voluntary sector which can provide these records, but to provide them to an acceptable format and accuracy requires access to Ordnance Survey base mapping which is beyond the reach of smaller wildlife recording schemes and societies.
It is crucial that the 1:25,000 raster product at the very least is freely available for public use and for products such as MapMate and Recorder. Not everyone has access to a developer to make use of the OpenSpace product set.
A pan-charities agreement, or pan-environment sector agreement, is much needed.