[Wikipedia-l] Dream a little... ...of free geodata

[Dschwen]

> The point is: suppose someone wanted to buy $100,000,000 of existing
> copyrighted material and set it free.  What should it be?

Geographical data!

Right now there os only a very limited amount of free geodata available. The 
US is a positive example, but in Europe most of the data to generate useful 
maps is copyrighted and sold to companies like TeleAtlas.

Geographical data would allow the creation of a free atlas, which could be 
linked to already geocoded Wikipedia content. With upcoming devices such as 
cameras and mobile phones readily equipped with GPS receivers, a 
Wikipedia "location based service" makes more and more sense.

The companies which make a living licensing this geodata (who's aquisition is 
mostly paid for with tax money by the way) will certainly oppose a complete 
buyout. But it is a real shame that not even a dataset with up to date high 
resolution country borders is available and maintained (correct me if I'm 
wrong). So this plus regional borders and major roads would be a good 
starting point. And would make projects like (shameless plug: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen/WikiMiniAtlas ) more useful.

Daniel

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