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How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

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Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#51

Post by swiley »

nickysielicki wrote: post #18
ucaetano wrote: post #2

This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

I only use google maps because the goecoding is a lot and I think the routing is done on their computers which makes it a lot faster.

Plus finding good OSM apps is hard.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#52

Post by thinkingemote »

lucideer wrote: post #34

This is great, but I'm surprised to see Apple featured so prominently in the title here alongside Facebook and Microsoft. Apple has an internal volunteer programmer whereby employees can choose to spend their time contributing to OSM—part of employee benefits (which is nice), whereas Microsoft and Facebook are actually contributing mapping data the company has created/collected to OSM. Furthermore, just 2 of the 3 li…

Apple now employee their own teams to do mapping

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#53

Post by hetspookjee »

For anyone interested in setting up their own OSM tile server + Nominatim geocoding: Here's an up to date docker image that is relatively easy to set up: https://github.com/drwitter/osm-tiles-docker

Great for maps in offline environments and/or querying without API limits!

Really think OSM is great.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#54

Post by skate22 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #18
ucaetano wrote: post #2

This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

Google's business location coverage in suburban areas is far better than OSM from my XP...by a longshot

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#55

Post by usuallymatt »

nickysielicki wrote: post #18
ucaetano wrote: post #2

This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

Mileage varies depending on where you live. I really like the idea of OSM and have tried it on and off for years but it's abysmal for my city. Post code searches come up wrong and my own home address places the map marker the other side of town from my house. Google Maps has been accurate every time I've used it and I've never had any issues. I can't really trust OSM as an accurate source over Google Maps right now but hopefully it improves as time goes on. I really hope it does. I have tried to use open source solutions a lot in my life but I can't with Maps right now.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#56

Post by JetSpiegel »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #48
danpat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here at Mapbox we're doing navigation on OSM with traffic data - we collect our own telemetry, and use it to guide OSM-based routing. There are numerous Android/iOS apps using our API that you could use, or you could build one yourself.

I've been wondering, given that you've made all of the building blocks, why hasn't Mapbox built and released an open source maps app for Android? It looks like you're just weekend's work away from having an open source app which is competetive with Google Maps on F-Droid.

OsmAnd already exists, and it had a metric ton of development time put into it.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#57

Post by fireattack »

nickysielicki wrote: post #18
ucaetano wrote: post #2

This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

My problem with OSM, besides the lack of satellite layer, is that it doesn't seem to offer any (detailed) info of landmarks - just the name, sometimes not even that: for example, some churches are just marked with a cross.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#58

Post by Moru »

usuallymatt wrote: post #55
nickysielicki wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second best? At least in my experience, OSM data is leaps and bounds better than Google Maps in every way possible, and it has been that way for a couple years now. The reason that I still use Google maps is that it's fast and well-integrated with my phone, and it has a lot of added features on top of the actual mapping that makes it very useful --- things like location sharing when you're on a longer road trip, crea…

Mileage varies depending on where you live. I really like the idea of OSM and have tried it on and off for years but it's abysmal for my city. Post code searches come up wrong and my own home address places the map marker the other side of town from my house. Google Maps has been accurate every time I've used it and I've never had any issues. I can't really trust OSM as an accurate source over Google Maps right now b…

It's open for you to make the changes nessessary. It's only as good as it's editors and there isn't that many that can dedicate a lot of time to mapping. Thank you all that does!

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#59

Post by 43920 »

yur3i__ wrote: post #42

I want to try openstreetmap, whats the best client available for android? (Pref. f-droid)

I've had a pretty good experience with Galileo (https://galileo-app.com/) on iOS; it looks like there's an Android version that's fairly similar.

Re: How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap

#60

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

lucideer wrote: post #34

This is great, but I'm surprised to see Apple featured so prominently in the title here alongside Facebook and Microsoft. Apple has an internal volunteer programmer whereby employees can choose to spend their time contributing to OSM—part of employee benefits (which is nice), whereas Microsoft and Facebook are actually contributing mapping data the company has created/collected to OSM. Furthermore, just 2 of the 3 li…

> just 2 of the 3 listed companies are major sponsors of OSM events

Don't assume that because a company isn't listed, it doesn't/hasn't contributed.

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