Ordnance Survey Amends Developer Agreement for Online Mapping Portal

Peter ter Haar, Ordnance Survey’s Director of Products, comments: “With the launch of our open-source web tools, and the recent debate that has been going on around the use of mapping on the Internet, we felt it was right to make some important changes to the OS OpenSpace service.

“I very much hope that the revisions we have made will see more and more people using mapping data to create mash-ups on the Web, and I would encourage other mapping platforms to follow our lead.”

Unlike OS OpenSpace, the recently launched OSGB Web Map Tools is released under a permissive free licence and does not restrict licensed developers to non-commercial activities or the use of any particular data source.

While the new map tools do not give free access to mapping, since the users must hold one of Ordnance Survey’s data licences, it does allow for third-party information to be freely overlaid and displayed.

To read the revised Terms and Conditions of OS OpenSpace in full, visit www.osopenspace.co.uk/developeragreement