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OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

blog.emacsen.net

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Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#271

Post by Zverik »

Avamander wrote: post #26
piracykills wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is OSM not doing this? I swear I've seen them importing and updating street level address data in my city - it directly referenced some city GIS server. Maybe not officially, but someone must be running scripts that do this?

Somebody might be doing that for their area but for example I haven't seen that happen in Estonia where the government provides absolutely excellent data but there's no easy and meaningful way getting that data into OSM

But it did happen. A few years ago we (as in estonian + russian communitites) helped import building outlines and most roads to OSM: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/imports/2013-March...

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#272

Post by sgc »

emj wrote: post #253
sgc wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certainly not an expert on international data access regulations. But at the same time, there is more than enough of that information publicly available to make it a basic first step in a mapping application/dataset.

Open address has a good map that show this ( http://results.openaddresses.io/ ), but for any area that is grey on that map you are going to be a long way from that "basic first step" you talk about. Adress data is hard, there are so many shitty collections with bad licenses.

Thanks for that link. I dropped their coverage chart into a spreadsheet to come up with 1,184,252,000 (surely estimated) people covered by their address data - not to mention covered commercial addresses, which started this thread. My point was that there is enough green on that map, and enough obvious, critical demand, to make it a pretty fundamental feature for a mapping process, not that it would work most of the time.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#273

Post by fludlight »

wst_ wrote: post #247
rmc wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you like trains? Train nerds have made a detailed map ( https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ ) There are a few local specific maps ( Here's one in Welsh https://openstreetmap.cymru/ ) Interested in what shops/venues are wheelchair accessible? Wheelmap has you covered https://wheelmap.org/map#/?zoom=14 Kurviger is a routing service for motorcyclists. Pick a point, select a direction, and a distance, and it'll generate a…

You mean few small (relatively) communities did this for themselves, because it was obvious no one will think about them and in most cases ordinary user doesn't care much about their input. I am talking about an average map user, globally. If you want global coverage and relying on people to input data, then good luck. I do really like the idea and I wish with all my heart that people would be that generous with thei…

> roads in Japan have no meaning.

I've never been to Japan. Can you elaborate?

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#274

Post by WhitneyLand »

rmc wrote: post #269
WhitneyLand wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any connection to any company involved with OSM tech, just so I understand your perspective? Mentioning OSM has gained functionality is irrelevant, the article’s point is the API which serves a different purpose. What other companies offer is irrelevant that’s not OSM. Your other points seem to attempt to diminish the importance of the API, yet the state of modern software has become such that almost any…

The "OSM API" is an editing API, for editing the map. The OSM ecosystem has gained some new, much more powerful APIs, which Doctor_Fegg mentions. OSRM's API, GraphHopper's API, Overpass's API, these are all better than the APIs that were available in 2009

Again I would ask, how does that invalidate the article’s premise that the core software API hasn’t changed in ~10 years?

What other significant, widely used software, depends only on the “ecosystem” for APIs development, while having no active API efforts in the core project?

I can think of none. Maybe some examples exist somewhere, but at the least it’s unusual, especially given the overall context of the article.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#275

Post by rmc »

fludlight wrote: post #273
wst_ wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean few small (relatively) communities did this for themselves, because it was obvious no one will think about them and in most cases ordinary user doesn't care much about their input. I am talking about an average map user, globally. If you want global coverage and relying on people to input data, then good luck. I do really like the idea and I wish with all my heart that people would be that generous with thei…

> roads in Japan have no meaning. I've never been to Japan. Can you elaborate?

I suspect they're referring to the Japanese addressing schem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#276

Post by rmc »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #274
rmc wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "OSM API" is an editing API, for editing the map. The OSM ecosystem has gained some new, much more powerful APIs, which Doctor_Fegg mentions. OSRM's API, GraphHopper's API, Overpass's API, these are all better than the APIs that were available in 2009

Again I would ask, how does that invalidate the article’s premise that the core software API hasn’t changed in ~10 years? What other significant, widely used software, depends only on the “ecosystem” for APIs development, while having no active API efforts in the core project? I can think of none. Maybe some examples exist somewhere, but at the least it’s unusual, especially given the overall context of the article.

The core editing API hasn't changed in years. HTTP/1.1 come out in 1997 and HTTP/2 in 2015. Was web programming in 2014 the same as web programming in 1998?

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#277

Post by makomk »

jadavies wrote: post #220
makomk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found OSMAnd quite buggy and temperamental, plus it heavily pushes you to the paid version if you want up to date maps (so you could effectively ending up paying a third party to access your own mapping work unreliably).

I use the paid for product but, from what I remember, you get the same maps with the free version. The difference between the two is that you're limited to 10 (?) maps download in the free version.

They changed this sometime in the last few months. As well as reducing the limit to 7 map downloads total, the maps paid users have access to are now updated faster than the free ones.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#278

Post by tripzilch »

seppel wrote: post #239
dfox wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not and in fact technically can not, because the underlying map data is different between google maps and waze.

The underlying map data is the "real world", so there certainly is a mapping between the google and waze map data, even if the mapping is non-trivial :) There are thing like OpenLR, which were invented exactly to solve these kinds of problems.

... that's the first time I've seen someone claim, seriously and in all honestly (I assume), that the Map is, in fact, the Territory.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#279

Post by koffiezet »

lucb1e wrote: post #87
acabal wrote: post #15

I remember just a few years ago, I got a new phone and was interested in replacing as many Google apps with OSS maps that I could. (K9 instead of Google's mail app, etc.) Naturally I turned to OSM instead of Google Maps. But I was really surprised by how strange and difficult it was to install and use. As the author mentioned, OSM itself doesn't have any apps, which is very confusing. After some research I figured ou…

> Needless to say I quickly gave up on using OSM and turned back to Google Maps--and I'm their perfect use case, a skilled techie with a deep interest in using free software! I can't imagine trying to explain how to use OSM to my mom My mom got an iPhone gifted from my dad, so there's mistake number one (I don't know of any decent OSM apps on that proprietary platform), but for what it's worth, my non-technical girlf…

Actually, Apple Maps uses (or at least used to use) OSM data for certain parts of the world.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#280

Post by WhitneyLand »

rmc wrote: post #276
WhitneyLand wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again I would ask, how does that invalidate the article’s premise that the core software API hasn’t changed in ~10 years? What other significant, widely used software, depends only on the “ecosystem” for APIs development, while having no active API efforts in the core project? I can think of none. Maybe some examples exist somewhere, but at the least it’s unusual, especially given the overall context of the article.

The core editing API hasn't changed in years. HTTP/1.1 come out in 1997 and HTTP/2 in 2015. Was web programming in 2014 the same as web programming in 1998?

Have you ever designed and implemented a modern api? It doesn’t work like that.

HTTP itself is fundamental and a different level of abstraction. We would not want monthly updates.

A closer analogy is Wikipedia (see wikimedia api). It hasn’t had the fastest evolution, but it makes OSM look like the stone age. You could look at the github api as a project that’s invested more frequently.

And it’s not just because these are projects with vast riches (even though WP’s multi-million budget is actually tight). There are countless smaller projects that keep a well maintained API. I just list these because they are well known.

The role and importance of APIs in software has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. It’s true at one point it was more of a luxury and just wasn’t as central to many projects.

Those days are far enough in the past and so anachronistic that a ~10 year stale API at this point should be considered architectural malpractice.

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