Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

Post by lostlogin » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

alufers wrote: post #112

juliansimioni wrote: post #51

Here is why you should contribute to OSM even though there are major players profiting from it: OSM is big enough and good enough that all the tech giants (except Google) would do better to start with OSM and improve it to meet their needs than to start a new, completely proprietary map from scratch. That means that we are in an amazing place where in addition to the substantial volunteer OSM community, there are con…

OSM is so good that even the fire fighters use it in Poland for navigation and finding fire hydrants. The funny thing is that if you modify or add a fire hydrant a guy from the emergency services asks to send a picture of it before he approves the change.

Post by kevinventullo » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #142

kevinventullo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with the more extreme OSM folks is that as soon as you are working for a large company, you are no longer a member of the community. More generally, there is nothing the big companies could do to make them happy, short of divesting completely from OSM so that they can get their hobby project from 2008 back.

I’m sure you can find any given opinion in a community of 2m registered users with a public mailing list, especially any community which includes a bunch of 17-year old Linux enthusiasts, but it’s not remotely representative of the OSM community nor a particularly useful subset to identify.

Post by Doctor_Fegg » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #163

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you can find any given opinion in a community of 2m registered users with a public mailing list, especially any community which includes a bunch of 17-year old Linux enthusiasts, but it’s not remotely representative of the OSM community nor a particularly useful subset to identify.

I agree they are not representative of the community, but they are a quite vocal minority, to whom anyone working on OSM in a corporate context is well-acquainted. I offer my observations as a warning to take any anti-corporate sentiment from self-proclaimed OSM community representatives with a grain of salt.

Post by KennyBlanken » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #144

> It may be mainly made by individuals in there spare time, but the big tech companies are making millions of it. Dude please proof read. I walk into an article making a statement and the very second sentence has errors like this, you're losing credibility. > They are reasonably good at fixing and contributing data to OSM in those regions. They employ nobody in the OSM community. Except whoever contributes data to OS…

Post by BoumTAC » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #123

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #87

This article is just factually wrong. It alleges repeatedly that Facebook, Apple, Microsoft etc “employ nobody in the OSM community”. They do. Microsoft even employed the founder of OSM, Steve Coast, for a while. If your criterion is ‘involved in OSM prior to current employment’, I could name a bunch of people currently working for Facebook, Amazon, Snap etc of whom that’s true. (One such person even stood for electi…

Apple had full time OSM mappers as well as sponsored weekly mapping meetups where employees could volunteer to help with mapping. I’m not sure if they still do this. The OSM and cartographers I worked with at Apple were all very passionate about helping map remote parts of the world and the benefits mapping brings during disasters.