Via the Guardian’s Free Our Data Blog, but with remarkably little fanfare elsewhere- the UK Government have released their new strategy for the Ordnance Survey. The results have the potential to be really good, but might also be a bit of a damp squib. The big concession is an extended OS OpenSpace service:

It will provide greater access to free use of a number of Ordnance Survey products from 1:10,000 scale through to 1:1 million scale. It will also include official boundaries information.

This is good news, though not as forward thinking as I’d like, unless the terms and conditions for the use of Open Space change dramatically. In my dreams, they are going to release their mapping via WMS- after all it would save them having to ship out all those update cds every year…

The new pricing strucure for full data access will be out in October, apparently. I’m not holding my breath for any nice friendly educational-charity fee structures though, since the whole document seems to assume you’re either an individual (read hobbyist) or a commercial company, and the trouble with educational charities is that we don’t really fit into a sensible box like that.

What’s nice though, is that the whole document is available online as a commentable document. Not sure how much notice will be taken of feedback, but it’s a start!