ebygomm – exactly right.
It's not like I never bought OS maps – I own about 60 – but I always felt I was buying the printed product, not a licence to use the data it contained.
The OS was commercialised and our survey data given to them on a plate, with crown copyright to protect it. It was protectionist and anti-competitive at a time when there was an explosion in the demand and use of mapping. It's a credit to Harveys/Anquet that they embarked on their own excellent surveys is direct competition.
People have been illegally pinching and using OS data from multimap and streetmap for ages. I have viewed this as a "moral right" because of the way the surveys were funded.
It now means that we can make our own cycling maps and sell/publish them, based on OS survey data, without licensing and without fear of prosecution. Hooray!