201–210 of 224 posts
> Google says I’ve helped 90 000 people find the eye clinic in the last six months Presumably the clinic is not seeing 500 patients/customers per day, xor is a very large facility that thus should be findable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The highest quality aerial photography of my country (Denmark) is taken from planes, not satellites.
"Satellite" imagery on Google Maps is a misnomer, and when it launched there was a big disagreement on the name that got brought all the way to Larry and Sergey. At the end of the meeting one of them said "call it Bird Mode", but the devs ignored that and stuck with "satellite" because they though bird mode was silly. More details in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370126678253569
> 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://…
The article is very weird. If the author doesn't understand the value of the aerial imagery (global) they have obviously never tried to license this stuff globally. That alone should give Microsoft "platinum" status. Secondly, you need users to justify investments in these products. Microsoft brings users. Now businesses and others start paying attention, updating their details etc.
By the way, that's also why Microsoft shies away from cartographic products except when maps are absolutely needed, they have encountered situations (for example, time zone maps and flag emojis) that Microsoft doesn't want to get involved in, and so avoids those if it's possible.
I struggle with contributing to open source but in a different context. In my opinion, the video games industry is information sparse on high quality software engineering practices, for whatever reason (NDAs, language/culture, etc). I am already authoring content that basically imports DevOps practices and experiences I have from my day job into a video games context. I believe practitioners have an edge over non-pra…
I figure I will be forgotten entirely within a generation or three, but maybe my minor contributions to open source software will help folks now and in the future solve problems. That coupled with the fact that I am standing on the shoulders of giants (whose names I mostly don't know) makes the choice to release my code freely easy. As a bonus, the more eyes there are on my code the more likely it is that I get good…
I struggle with contributing to open source but in a different context. In my opinion, the video games industry is information sparse on high quality software engineering practices, for whatever reason (NDAs, language/culture, etc). I am already authoring content that basically imports DevOps practices and experiences I have from my day job into a video games context. I believe practitioners have an edge over non-pra…
I'm not a open source contributor in a major way. Just wanted to chime in. No doubt at least part of your know-how, however small, was built upon others' experiences (also hard to give credit for everything). If you do release your content, this is just giving back to the community. Also to play with your ego side, let's say some other person beats you to releasing the content that you wanted to release. And that per…
I think in a way we are all pilots of this big elephant like meat machine. It has its wants, it has its needs, and as pilots we are trying to steer ourselves with the understanding that the elephant is ultimately doing what it wants. I suppose the trick is to understand the elephant (ourselves) to know how to steer into the direction we want.
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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).
- import (adding object to database) - for example https://budynki.openstreetmap.org.pl/ is used by OSM community in Poland to import official address and building data after review (sadly, quality makes necessary to review data but still saves time overall)
- using for mapping (for example Bing aerial, Strava heatmap, aerial imagery released by many governments is also available on a compatible license)
- linking (for example many OSM objects link Wikipedia articles about them or their official website)
- used to find places for mapping (if Google starts showing new road I am not allowed to copy it into OSM - both due to licensing and low quality of Google data. But I can select this place for the next bicycle trip and map everything there as I survey this area)
Not sure how it matches general terminology, OSM has some slang/terms which is sometime incompatible or unknown elsewhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is very weird. If the author doesn't understand the value of the aerial imagery (global) they have obviously never tried to license this stuff globally. That alone should give Microsoft "platinum" status. Secondly, you need users to justify investments in these products. Microsoft brings users. Now businesses and others start paying attention, updating their details etc.
Genuinely it's really a pain. You're not just dealing with intellectual property issues, you're literally brushing with militar ies (and different cartographic laws) in the process of licensing high-resolution (those which allows you to see streets and buildings) images. The fact that they were able to do license this, even if it's still restricted for commercial use (seriously, it's really not that easy) speaks volu…
I really need to link https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
> most of the companies spending big money to develop open source software are doing it because it’s a good business strategy for them, not because they suddenly stopped believing in capitalism and fell in love with freedom-as-in-speech.
and explains why it makes sense.
See also a bit broader https://www.gwern.net/Complement
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.
> OSMF agrees that it may only use or sub-license Your Contents as part of a database and only under the terms of one or more of the following licences: ODbL 1.0 for the database and DbCL 1.0 for the individual contents of the database; CC-BY-SA 2.0; or such other free and open licence (for example, http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/) as may from time to time be chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership and approved by at least a 2/3 majority vote of active contributors.
So it would be necessary to hijack Open Street Map Foundation, though it is still possibility.
Note that Mapillary from start was for-profit company with contributors giving full right to their photos.
Can someone give details about what is the best way to contribute? Is there some easy way like just installing an app in my phone and receive popup notifications to answer some quick questions when I'm in a queue of a random local shop?
On computer you can also open https://www.openstreetmap.org/ and navigate to are you know well and press edit (tutorial should appear).
There is also Vespucci on Android and JOSM for PC for more powerful and more complicated editing.
All editing requires registration for user account.
Feel free to use one of https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels if you want help from a community (and "I am confused newbie" is a good reason to ask).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s more complex than that. OSM’s licence isn’t a direct parallel of one single software licence, but it has an LGPL-ish permissive aspect for making things from the data (“Produced Works”). OSM data is used a lot for routing (pretty much all bike navigation apart from Google’s uses OSM data) and increasingly for GIS-type analysis.
When I was looking at it, I got the impression a produced work was something like a t shirt with a map printed on it. Is that wrong? Or any idea where I could read about how the interpret that permission?
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Licence_and_Lega...