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OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

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Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#131

Post by karussell »

skimpycompiler wrote: post #55
lnanek2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android developer here as well. Have found the same. It has saved the day before where the only other option would have been licensing commercial options like skobbler. I don't think Google actually dog foods their Android Google Maps API, so it tends to be pretty limited.

Google Maps is just too expensive and its pricing model isn't exponential at all, it's not even quadratic. Very common operation is looking for pairwise distance matrix. Pricing and limits are totally irrational. 100,000 daily limit is totally impossible for an app with 10 users. 100x100 = 10,000 :D Given that Google probably has all of the distances cached somewhere on their servers, I see no technical reason why th…

We often hear that the pricing model is not the only problem. E.g. there are other restrictions like being forced to display the result on a (google) map etc

Also not that you cannot really cache routes, nor could you store all (not even Google) or even just distances or ETAs. But that is also not necessary to get fast and relative 'CPU light' responses.

> I get incomparable functionality using OSM.

Have a look at https://graphhopper.com/ with a reasonable pricing model for the whole Directions API and specifically for the Matrix API https://github.com/graphhopper/directions-api/blob/master/FA...

(note: I'm the author of GraphHopper)

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#132

Post by maxerickson »

monknomo wrote: post #130
maxerickson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prominence is hard to do automatically, so it may not be trivial to get the system that renders the osm.org tiles to prefer Philadelphia (it does things like look at population, but that data is present for Philadelphia).

Very true! I also took a look at it to figure out why it was showing up that way. They look like they are the same magnitude of thing (city) and they both have population. I'm wondering if it's actually showing Camden county?

No, it's not the county. I think what is happening is that the renderer decides there is no room to draw the Philadelphia label once the New Jersey label is in place.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#133

Post by skimpycompiler »

karussell wrote: post #131
skimpycompiler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is just too expensive and its pricing model isn't exponential at all, it's not even quadratic. Very common operation is looking for pairwise distance matrix. Pricing and limits are totally irrational. 100,000 daily limit is totally impossible for an app with 10 users. 100x100 = 10,000 :D Given that Google probably has all of the distances cached somewhere on their servers, I see no technical reason why th…

We often hear that the pricing model is not the only problem. E.g. there are other restrictions like being forced to display the result on a (google) map etc Also not that you cannot really cache routes, nor could you store all (not even Google) or even just distances or ETAs. But that is also not necessary to get fast and relative 'CPU light' responses. > I get incomparable functionality using OSM. Have a look at ht…

As I've said somewhere down the thread, OSRM has the same functionality and speed is supreme. Microsoft Research paper I've cited is equivalent to 5 reads of memory and needs about 20GB RAM for the whole Europe. It's a pretty good cache.

OSS is eating the world of geo.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#134

Post by AReallyGoodName »

voltagex_ wrote: post #115
AReallyGoodName wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online geocoding service are always the worst way to go. You only use the online services if you don't have an alternative dataset. The osm datasets actually aren't that big, the entire PBF formatted dataset is Also it's just completely fucking ridiculous to send a request over the internet to perform a calculation. I encountered the issue myself ages ago where i had a task to reverse geocode for a railways GPS syste…

What was your dataset for your reverse geocodes? The GeoNames dataset can't be that accurate, can it?

It's quite reasonable despite being a non-polygonal dataset if all you want is the nearest suburb (this was my use case). They have multiple points for the same location so nearest point search works quite well even with weirdly shaped suburbs. I've mucked around with other datasets (there's an OSM branch in my public repo that i'm currently working on to get down to street and street number level) but for the use i mentioned above the geonames works well.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#135

Post by maxerickson »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #129
acqq wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please give some specific examples of the obstacles presented by the OSM license to the projects you mention?

Most interesting products of spatiotemporal analysis that might use OSM data as an input are defined as a derivative database under the OSM database license. The mapping data is enriched and blended with multiple orthogonal data sources (like social media, mobile phone telemetry, remote imaging, etc) to provide a more accurate model of physical world dynamics. I think a big part of the problem is OSM's tacit assumpti…

What is the upside for OSM if it changes licensing terms to be more amenable to those users? You say it is the tail wagging the dog, but you skip over why OSM should even care about capturing those users.

I realize that "funding" is an obvious answer, but I'm not real sure what that is supposed to look like. I also don't think the generic answer would convince proponents of the share a like terms (I'm personally ambivalent about share a like, but it's clear that a big chunk of the OSM community values it).

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#136

Post by kragen »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #65
ancymon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flag OSM geocoder is Nominatim. It turns out it won't work if you provide only part of street name (if OSM contains full street name) or when you provide full name (if OSM contains only part of the name) [1]. So in my opinion searching for addresses is not reliable. That's one thing, another is that addresses are quite often duplicated. There's no automatic check for that and such duplicates exist for years. [1]…

There are several geocoders available for OSM. To say that "the database is inconsistent [and] contains many errors", and then back that up solely with a criticism of one piece of client software, makes no sense.

Nominatim is the one I've always tried using, and it doesn't work very well. Can you recommend a better one?

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#137

Post by tripzilch »

mikekchar wrote: post #105
donquichotte wrote: post #3

When I was traveling overland in central Asia, everybody I met was using maps.me with OSM. The maps were of surprisingly good quality and maps.me is superb, allowing the maps for whole countries to be downloaded (ideal if you don't have a data plan) and the route calculation is quick as long as the road grid isn't too dense.

I was amazed recently. About 3 years ago, my town in Japan had no maps on OSM at all. I set about adding in the routes that I rode on my bicycle, but it was pretty pathetic. I went to the UK for two years and when I came back somebody had finished everything. All the public paths and everything are clearly marked. I think the only thing left is to tag the stores. The really nice thing about OSM is how easy it is to c…

Ha, it's like ant-swarm optimisation! :)

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#138

Post by tripzilch »

maxerickson wrote: post #135
jandrewrogers wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most interesting products of spatiotemporal analysis that might use OSM data as an input are defined as a derivative database under the OSM database license. The mapping data is enriched and blended with multiple orthogonal data sources (like social media, mobile phone telemetry, remote imaging, etc) to provide a more accurate model of physical world dynamics. I think a big part of the problem is OSM's tacit assumpti…

What is the upside for OSM if it changes licensing terms to be more amenable to those users? You say it is the tail wagging the dog, but you skip over why OSM should even care about capturing those users. I realize that "funding" is an obvious answer, but I'm not real sure what that is supposed to look like. I also don't think the generic answer would convince proponents of the share a like terms (I'm personally ambi…

I wonder, could OSM even change their licensing in that way if they wanted to? Because all the contributors submitted their content under the old license, they'd all have to agree to the new license again, right?

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#139

Post by maxerickson »

tripzilch wrote: post #138
maxerickson wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the upside for OSM if it changes licensing terms to be more amenable to those users? You say it is the tail wagging the dog, but you skip over why OSM should even care about capturing those users. I realize that "funding" is an obvious answer, but I'm not real sure what that is supposed to look like. I also don't think the generic answer would convince proponents of the share a like terms (I'm personally ambi…

I wonder, could OSM even change their licensing in that way if they wanted to? Because all the contributors submitted their content under the old license, they'd all have to agree to the new license again, right?

Contributions are under a contributor agreement, the OpenStreetMap Foundation controls the data and can change the license.

The previous license change was a lesson learned.

Re: OpenStreetMap is the Most Important thing in Geo

#140

Post by rmc »

tripzilch wrote: post #138
maxerickson wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the upside for OSM if it changes licensing terms to be more amenable to those users? You say it is the tail wagging the dog, but you skip over why OSM should even care about capturing those users. I realize that "funding" is an obvious answer, but I'm not real sure what that is supposed to look like. I also don't think the generic answer would convince proponents of the share a like terms (I'm personally ambi…

I wonder, could OSM even change their licensing in that way if they wanted to? Because all the contributors submitted their content under the old license, they'd all have to agree to the new license again, right?

No. Originally OSM was under a CC licence. In 2012, it was changed to the current ODbL licence. All the data from mappers who didn't agree had to be deleted. In order to map now, you have to agree to the "Contributor terms" which means the licence can be changed to any other "free and open" licence with a 2/3 vote of active mappers.
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