Compromise in the air?

Started off rebuffing belief that shapefile is proprietary but then went a bit deeper into the article and re-read Mr C's speech - then had to filter to end up with something that linked (my) data (awful pun, apologies to Sir TBL); so worth cross-referencing here - http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=449&cpage=1#comment-120970