I think the UMN Mapserver (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu ) would be a good choice in terms of quality and copyright (its open source). Have a look on the sample page (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/gallery.html) .
"Lars Aronsson" lars@aronsson.se schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:Pine.LNX.4.61.0508310333360.26356@sara.aronsson.se...
The company Demis in the Netherlands sells software for a map server and also runs a demo on their own site. The map data for this demo have been collected from public domain sources, and the company doesn't claim any copyright for the generated maps. The maps are not the very best, but good enough for many purposes. Some maps of this origin are already at Wikimedia Commons, e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-Hrusica-in-contex--raw.png and have been used for further processing, e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationArno.PNG
I developed a simple tool that makes it easier to find the right map, and then I uploaded two dozens of them to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_maps_from_demis.nl
However, the people at Demis are concerned about a "Slashdot effect" that might overburden their map server if everybody starts to use this tool. They would prefer if somebody could buy the Demis software and run their own server. Unfortunately, the map server only runs on Microsoft Windows.
Does anybody have a Demis server running already, that I can use for my tool? There are many WMS-compliant servers out there, but most have very fuzzy or complicated copyright restrictions.
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se