371–380 of 477 posts
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What do you mean no? You're saying the same thing, you just added a step to explain why the alternatives were cheaper (free).
No, it was not a price point only problem.
I worked at Tele Atlas/TomTom until 10 years ago. There is literally nothing new in this announcement except that they are going to "steal" data from OSM now. sensor derived data, user generated content, camera vans all of that is not new. All this existed when I left, so did the people mentioned in this announcement that are still running the show. I always hoped they would eventually realize that they need a fresh…
Do you know that Microsoft Bing maps also "steals" the OSM data? They did some very clever "reverse stealing" as well when they contributed back to the project by providing millions of accurate building footprints. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It's a win-win situation when ANY large mapping group joins OSM. At the very least; they will accidentally contribute road-level improvements when they work with the data. I rely…
The point of their comment was to criticise TomTom for not doing much interesting themselves, not to discuss the nuances of OSM. In this context, "steal" makes sense because it's something that TomTom can claim to be innovative with while actually the innovation credit belongs to OSM.
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That's definitely why I stopped using TomTom. Like gambiting, I really liked their product. They were compact, fast and the UX was great. But Google Maps is free.
> But Google Maps is free. We need a new alternative word for "free" when it comes to advertising companies. Something short to say "the cost is too abstract and indirect to understand fully or describe, but does impact society at large". Maybe "free-ish"?
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Do you know that Microsoft Bing maps also "steals" the OSM data? They did some very clever "reverse stealing" as well when they contributed back to the project by providing millions of accurate building footprints. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It's a win-win situation when ANY large mapping group joins OSM. At the very least; they will accidentally contribute road-level improvements when they work with the data. I rely…
Now imagine if Tomtom and Microsoft both paid users for map improvements. That would be super cool. They could even make an app to submit the improvements and even show me ads, I don't care. I would still do it.
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Every item on OSM (node, way, relation) is versioned and has a history. If you can link us to your changes I’m happy to try to help find out why your change was reverted. Usually that’s only the case for blatant errors, copying from proprietary maps (ehm, Google Maps) or vandalism. We’re trying to be a friendly bunch, and I’d like to get you back as an editor.
I remember quite a few years ago when I once went into OSM and fixed some streets in Las Vegas by "unbraiding" the intersections, in other words converting intersections with ways that joined at one point to ways that joined in a tic-tac-toe pattern. I believe this was considered best practice at the time in OSM. Well, a few days later, I got a very angry private message from some guy complaining that I edited "his"…
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If you use the reporting interface they seem to update promptly. There’s a major road near us where Google used to tell people to make a illegal left turn across 4 lanes of traffic, which was common enough that I used to see it almost every time I went by for years. Once I found the well-hidden reporting UI, that stopped two weeks later.
There is a no-left-turn street near my work, and Google maps keeps telling me to turn left there. I've been reporting it every now and then since at least 2018 and it does nothing.
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In your original comment, you said they stopped the service, and now you're saying you expected to have it until they stopped the service. Did you mean they stopped your particular subscription only, for having changed your device?
The app was still available in the app store, but from a certain date they wanted more money for me to still use it on my unchanged device.
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Traffic and accidents might push you into different routes, especially if you have major decision points like which route you take around some geographic feature. When I drive in Los Angeles decades back even people who’d been driving there for ages wanted traffic reports to pick between roughly equivalent freeways because almost inevitably one of them would have much worse congestion due to an accident and you could…
Distances in LA aren't measured in miles, they're measured in time -- and the distance between two points changes based on time of day, direction, and events like sportsball or presidential visits. Knowing where to switch between freeways and surface streets, and what route to take in what conditions, can cut half off the driving time. Some examples of varying conditions from my personal history, even with optimal ro…
Yes - I remember as a kid learning how to read maps and noticing my dad's face when I was like "These cities are only 10 miles apart. Why does it take an hour to get to grandfather's?".
The surface streets are an especially interesting blindspot a lot of drivers have. There was a period around the turn of the century where I was commuting between Santa Ana and Garden Grove and freeway traffic was generally manageable early in the morning but on the trip home it was often better to cruise down the surface streets where the lights were timed around 20mph than to sit in stop-and-go traffic on 405 or 55/5.
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Google Maps has one of the most abusive license practices I've seen; effectively they force every one of their competitors to use OSM. As a consequence, OSM is the default for every company in this space.
A business decision regarding IP is not abuse.