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Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

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Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#181

Post by gnufx »

matkoniecz wrote: post #49
phh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand why you say this (which sums up to "governments are bureaucrats, please get out of the way for us to do the actual job"), but the issue is that there are still people needed to go from government data to OSM. Ideally, governments would simply pay OSM people to do it on their own, but eh, we know this can never happen, and even if it did, greedy people might be tempted by that kind of money and would go i…

Once data is high quality actual import is quite easy to do. Vast majority of time is used up on handling useful but not fully correct data. I am not aware of any datasets that are high quality, on a compatible license, including data of interest to OSM and existing for longer than a year - that would not be imported already. There are more people interested in making imports than high quality datasets on a compatibl…

For clarity, I assume "import" isn't meant to mean everything in the dataset is shortly in OSM, but it's available to aid with mapping (e.g. free UK Ordnance Survey data).

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#183

Post by seaman1921 »

purple_turtle wrote: post #173
seaman1921 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is not true, you fix it for everyone using Google maps (which is basically everyone)

Where I can download Google map data dataset for my own processing? Yes, Google makes apps usable by general public but their database is proprietary - including what people contribute for free.

ok I thought parent comment meant to say it only changes your private maps, not for everyone. I see what you mean

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#184

Post by einpoklum »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #108
einpoklum wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Competition is a waste I partially agree with this claim, but - FOSS software does not prevent competition, it just takes the intellectual property and copyrights aspect from it. You compete in conditions of access to your competitor's data as well as yours. And there is intense competition in FOSS! It doesn't devolve into everybody working on the same thing. But the point is it is always possible to derive from on…

I guess we should be more specific: in OSS, there is licensing competition in that there are multiple licenses. Competition between different OSS platforms is platform competition , and competition between applications on a platform is ecosystem competition . When you think about it, there are many levels of competition, and very little code re-use. Only a few shared libraries or APIs/ABIs are actually reused by more…

> and very little code re-use.

Well, first, a "handful of apps" is already quite a bit of reuse; and second - it's quite a lot of libraries that get reused (or used outside of the original application). It's true that you have many libdo-stuff-for-foo-app that's not very reusable, but if you search the web, or github/sourceforge/etc., there's a hell of a lot that's available for use and reuse. Finally, some (re)use is from toy projects or ones not intended for mass usage.

So it's really not bad at all :-)

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#185

Post by avar »

VictorPath wrote: post #36

OpenStreetMap has an "on the ground rule" where a street, a street name, a city, a city name etc. are determined by who currently has control on the ground. So the Malvinas are the Falkland Islands, Derry is Londonderry etc. The sole exception to this is the Crimea, which the OSM board ruled is exempt from this rule, as they favor the Ukrainian government over the Russian government.

Your summary seems inaccurate per https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DW...

I.e. they ruled that any mass changes based on administrative declarations weren't OK, but changing street names was fine if the on the ground signage had been changed.

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#186

Post by gnufx »

gumby wrote: post #60

> They employ nobody in the OSM community. Malone keeps saying this but I don’t think it means what he says it is. Those large entities employ lots of people who add to OSM. Not only do they add content but by his own description they do QC and add other new features and support. Their contributions are no different (except in magnitude) than a single, tiny contribution I might make, yet presumably that would make me…

Actually, one difference is that contributions by, for instance Amazon in my experience, have been lower-quality than the typical amateur on-the-ground mapping. However, their contributors have been gracious and apparently willing to learn when you point out you've surveyed the area and they've put a service road -- it's usually service roads! -- through a wall next to the house numbers you added, for example.

But, yes, it seems rather like saying that Intel or IBM contributors aren't in the GNU community, and that would have been absurd to argue about Cygnus. The worry might be organizational take-over by commercial interests (Linux Foundation?), but that's different.

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#187

Post by jjwiseman »

lostlogin wrote: post #161
alufers wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is this not done by the installer? Seems like a problem that didn’t need crowd sourcing.

Some things happened before OSM existed.

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#188

Post by commoner »

chaz6 wrote: post #94

I am happy to contribute for free, but after what happened with Mapillary, I would like a clause that states that should OSM be sold, I would be entitled to a portion of the sale amount commensurate with my contributions, or the option to withhold my contributions from the sale.

The difference between Mapillary and OSM is that Mapillary is a for-profit company, while OSM is an open dataset managed by a non-profit organization. The OSM Foundation can't sell its intellectual property rights to a for-profit company like Facebook without violating its mission statement:[1]

> The OpenStreetMap Foundation is an international, not-for-profit, democratic organisation with the tasks of supporting the OSM project, running and protecting the OSM database, and making it available to all. The OSMF membership is open to all who want to support the project and participate in the OSMF’s democratic process.

> The OpenStreetMap Foundation is there to protect the OSM data to keep it Free and Open.

Mapillary had always stated in their terms that any street imagery contributed to them belong to them. They then relicensed the imagery to be used for OSM contributions and other non-commercial purposes free of charge, but charged for commercial use. When Facebook acquired Mapillary, they obtained ownership of all of the contributions for their own use, but also relicensed them to be available free of charge for both commercial and non-commercial use.[2]

Many Mapillary contributors like you did not want Facebook to obtain the data. Since the OSM Foundation is non-profit, a similar situation would not happen to OSM as long as the OSM Foundation continues to be governed by people who have the best interests of the project and the community at heart.

[1] https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement

[2] https://joemorrison.medium.com/why-on-earth-did-facebook-jus...

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#189

Post by commoner »

EGreg wrote: post #53

Could this be a good use case for cryptocurrency?

Surprisingly, yes. The OsmAnd app developers created a program called OSM BTC that pays OSM contributors for their contributions in Bitcoin on a monthly basis, with the funds coming from 50% of the proceeds of the app's OsmAnd Live subscriptions:

- Program: https://osmbtc.org

- Announcement: https://osmand.net/blog/osm-live

Re: Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?

#190

Post by jessriedel »

Outsiders profit from a public commons project, so we shouldn't contribute to the commons? Am I misunderstanding the argument here?

Wikipedia helps innumerable companies do basic research. Should I stop contributing to Wikipedia? When I clean trash from a local river, Sam's Row Boat rental benefits. Should I stop cleaning the river?

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