This article is a bit scattered. But it makes one good point: Big Tech companies are profiting off of the OSM data set, while employing no one working on OSM. How do we change that?
Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
21–30 of 224 posts
Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#22About 10 years ago I helped build a piece of software that would use OSM data and that data needed to be precise. Turned out that a lot of the Tiger Maps scans were not super accurate so I urged our company to hire a data entry team to clean up a bunch of it. We had I think 5 or 6 people whose job it was to precisely clean up OSM data based on satellite imagery in a bunch of small-medium cities as well as Chicago. Everyone benefitted from this which was awesome.
Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#23> Microsoft Bing uses OSM in several regions, and is slowly moving from it’s traditional providers to OSM globally. They provide machine-learning (ML) datasets that they have computed from areal imagery. They employ nobody in the OSM community.
Microsoft Bing made its aerial imagery available for OSM editing, this is often very very very useful for mapping (speaking from own experience as an OSM mapper).
See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/product/imagery-service...
> The rights that you have under this agreement are limited solely to aerial imagery use in a non-commercial online editor application of OpenStreetMap maps (an "Application")
see also extra info in https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps#Terms.2C_Clari...
It is an interesting case as cost of that is basically nothing to Microsoft, this action has a very clear benefits to them, has negative influence on their competition like Google, has basically no negative side effects to OSM community (unlike company hiring people) and provides service that would cost OSM community ridiculous amounts of money if we would need to buy it (it would be impossible for us to buy worldwide aerial imagery of such quality).
It is weird to not mention it in that article.
Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#24I wish Ordnance Survey in the UK would help out a little with the UK dataset - even with just say the buildings
Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#25> They employ nobody in the OSM community. I imagine many of the employees that do the work mentioned in the article would consider themselves part of the OSM community.
Seems like circular reasoning: Being a part of the OSM community means they aren’t employed by OSM as employees. If they employ the person, they’re no longer a community member but an employee. I don’t actually see the issue.
> they aren’t employed by OSM
Note that OSM does not employ anyone (Open Street Map Foundation has very limited employees and contractors, see https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Contractors_and_employee... )
Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#26I've enjoyed Google Maps for many years and never paid for it. Apple MapKit appears to be free. I improve the experience for others when I help improve the maps and in turn my experience is improved by the contributions of others. It's costs Google and Apple money to provide the infrastructure for this, which they obtain in various ways such as advertising. It doesn't bother me if someone wants to advertise their sto…
> I've enjoyed Google Maps for many years and never paid for it.
You did pay for Google Maps indirectly as you were and still are a product Google sells to advertisers.
Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#27I’m curious to know if the companies that use OSM actually contribute back? Like fixing all the wrong/malicious data.
Microsoft Bing made its aerial imagery available for OSM editing, this is often very very very useful for mapping.
See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/product/imagery-service...
> The rights that you have under this agreement are limited solely to aerial imagery use in a non-commercial online editor application of OpenStreetMap maps (an "Application")
see also extra info in https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps#Terms.2C_Clari...
Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#28At this point, I don't really consider OSM an OSS project, but an infrastructure. It has small value for everyone, but all combined usage, it has immense economical value for the society. All alone, it's not really useful to end-users, but it can help a lot of businesses that couldn't exist before it. Maps are already considered infrastructure, since they are already made by governments! The only missing part to say…
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Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
#29This article is a bit scattered. But it makes one good point: Big Tech companies are profiting off of the OSM data set, while employing no one working on OSM. How do we change that?
Apple and Microsoft do contribute a lot of data back to OSM though, as pointed out in the article, and they help fund it. OSM doesn’t employ anyone full time, but there are Apple and MS employees that contribute to OSM near or actually full time. So what exactly is it you think needs changing?