marc said:Trevor Barton said:Quoted message said:> You pays your money...
...and according to the OS you have pay again and again and again without making a choice
Given that (presumably) OS don't make a profit,
They do.
So it would appear. Still it doesn't change my argument, though.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:and that the money you pay goes both to them and to the cost of printing, you are not paying
again. We all pay for the mapping agency, but those of us that directly use the maps pay more. It
is silly to suggest that the maps ought to be free - that way the 90% of the population that
don't ever use (for example) a 1:50000 map
everyone in the UK uses the maps and repays for them, unless of course you believe that the
LAs,Water authorities, land registry,etc.etc. have their own mapping services?
Yes, quite, we all benifit equally from OS maps, except for those of us who want to use our own
personal printed versions of the maps, who benifit more. I truly don't see how anyone could argue
that they should be free, although you could possibly argue about the cost and that depends on the
printing cost I guess, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't a major part of the retail cost, which
includes a profit margin for everyone on the printing and distribution chain (or are you arguing
that they shoudldn't make a profit on the transaction?). They are hardly standard print jobs, and
even paperbacks at 5.99 only gets the author a quid or so and most publishing houses are not exactly
rolling in it.
Do you think that the LAs, water authorities and all the other commercial users of the maps get
them for nothing? They all pay for it, and at the end of the day mapping is an expensive
business. It seems to me that if you get more benifit from the OS (by buying their maps directly)
than the average use (that we all get through the LA, land registry and the like) then you should
pay extra for it.
Trev