bruce_bacheller wrote:

> So Lester it's the private companies that are putting the 'tax" on XML
> data exchange because they have in some way enhanced it ?

They claim to be enhancing it. The enhancements are not needed for the
main job, for example identifying a property, but you have to pay for
the bells and whistles just to get hold of the public domain grunt -
because they have 'bought the rights to distribute it'. The public
domain stuff is not currently being made available, only via third party
'suppliers'.

> Are they doing any value added services like transformation or
> mapping or are they just gouging for some xml bits ?

A better example would be another software patent. They 'thought of it
first' and so claim copyright on it, even though the real 'invention' is
public domain. There is no problem my taking a customers data, and
transforming it to the correct eGov defined structure, which is what we
do, but then I have to prove that we started from existing data, because
a lot of the 'proprietary' stuff is also posted round with licences
attached.

Helen's comment was that someone had to key the information in. I am
just saying that the keying has already been done and paid for, so
government offices and local councils shouldn't have to pay for it
again. We can work with what they ( and WE ) have already paid for. It's
a bit like taking the list of country codes, and then charging for it
'because you had to copy it from another machine'. Your time should be
paid for, but not annual licences to carry on using data that was not
yours in the first place. Creating an XML version of that data should
not be a licensable activity.

--
Lester Caine
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L.S.Caine Electronic Services