The PublicGeodata.org wiki and petition was started in early 2006 by Benjamin Henrion
and Jo Walsh, with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation, in an attempt to
raise awareness among the open geospatial community about the INSPIRE directive and
the political forces shaping the debate about open access to state-collected
information across Europe. The European Parliament and the Commission are both
strongly in favour of open access to geodata; the Council, conducting its business
behind closed doors, subject to national-level lobbies, has been pushing for
increased restrictions on the rights of European citizens to gain access to the data
that describes the world around them, in disregard of the economic evidence
supporting open access. Working together, European geospatial software developers and
users may still have a chance of influencing INSPIRE policy in a positive direction;
this is a discussion about how this may be achieved.