In early October the Dutch government announced it would release core geo data sets to the public free of charge for re-use, starting January 1st 2012. Until this point the core data set was available for a fee of 50.000 Euro. As of the start of 2012, the data is now available free of charge under a Creative Commons By Attribution license (see this Dutch description).

Immediately on January 1st, the Dutch OpenStreetMap community filed a request to obtain geo data of the Dutch Cadastre, testing the new policy. According to an article in WebWereld, the Cadastre granted the request on 3 January, and provided some 5 Gigabytes of data to OpenStreetMap.

The Dutch government already released the Dutch national road data set in December immediately following a court verdict that rejected a complaint by an existing commercial party aiming to prevent publication. Also in December a Dutch court ruled, again dismissing a complaint by a market party, that postcodes are to be released without conditions for re-use by February 2012. In both cases the State argued for release of data before the courts, showing the Dutch government's willingness to defend new open data policies when challenged.

This means that the most important geo data sets in the Netherlands are now available for all types of re-use free of charge. This development is warmly welcomed by the OpenStreetMap community. Stefan de Konink, one of the Dutch volunteers said "I'm glad the open data policies of Minister Verhagen (Economic Affairs) and Minister Schultz-Van Haegen (Infrastructure and Environment) are being enacted so fast and opening up new opportunities." The released data sets (national road data, geo data) are available for download via OpenStreetMap servers, next to being available from the Dutch government upon request.

Dutch geo data screenshot as published by OpenStreetMap Netherlands