OpenStreetMap hosted a Isle of Wight mapping party last weekend to which 40 volunteers showed up. The event managed to map about 90% of the island’s roads, according to a story in the Guardian Unlimited.

Largely in a response to the stringent copyright rules of the UK’s Ordinance Survey, OpenStreetMap is seeking to map the country’s roads in 5 years, drawing on volunteers armed with old maps and GPS units. Rather than push the OS to loosen its copyright restrictions, OpenStreetMap feels that building a freely accessible roads database is the way to go as it feels that it “can do a superior job, for example by avoiding the deliberate inaccuracies made by professional cartographers to catch those abusing their copyright.” The trick, of course, is main the collected data and ensure that it is kept up to date. However, having volunteers with GPS units in all parts of the country that know the local neighbourhood well will help to ease that concern.

By way of Boing Boing.

See related posting on the upcoming Mapchester event.