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Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation

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Re: Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation

#71

Post by rmc »

willrobinson wrote: post #67
rmc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Outside the USA (which has a nice "lots of government work is public domain" rule, which lots of countries lack), there is very little 'freely available' map data from countries. One of the first non-USA countries on Google Maps, the UK, even now does not have freely available map data from the government (this is partially why it was people in the UK who set up OSM)

I am sure about what I said in my comment, not what you've said in yours. I said they started with free data. And indeed they started with data on the US, not the UK. Everyting begins at home. My point is Maps did not start from zero. Public data got the ball rolling. I cannot say for sure but I would guess it is also what spurred the ideas to bring in a guy they knew who was doing related work at Stanford and also t…

Yes they started in USA, but when UK was announced it wasn't a blank map (like OSM was when it started). The UK maps started with purchased, non-free data. So in a way, you need to bootstrap it somehow.

Re: Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation

#72

Post by rmc »

runn1ng wrote: post #26
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenStreetMap just underwent a rather tortuous conversion from using Creative Commons to the ODBL ( http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/ ) I don't fully understand the ramifications, but it's possible that this was done so that companies like Google could build products on top of OSM data rather than re-invent the wheel, possibly in a parallel to GPL and LGPL or the split between Linux and thing like Tivo or And…

So, if I got it right, if Google uses OpenStreetMap, they will have to make their data available under ODBL? Good luck with that.

Essentially if Google use OSM and they improve/add to the map, then they have to release that data. They don't have to release, say, search data.

Re: Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation

#73

Post by rmc »

graue wrote: post #37
anonymouz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places it sure as hell would improve Google Maps if they would (be able to?) include OSM data. Compare for example Sarajevo on Google Maps at http://goo.gl/maps/kc3yP to its OSM counterpart at http://osm.org/go/xfYWiLv8-- .

Yeah, this looks pretty neglected by Google. Interesting comparison. I couldn't help noticing that the GMaps link loads instantly while this (much more useful) OSM link took nearly 20 seconds to fully load.

Partially that's the obvious due to Google having, like a bajillion servers, and OSM having like 2 dozen.

However the advantage of OSM is that it's the data, and you can render your own maps on your own hardware, and depending on your budget, make it as fast as possible.

Re: Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation

#75

Post by chippy »

ballpark wrote: post #47

Could anyone explain what the benefit might be to investing in an open source service like OpenStreetMap? This is a sincere question. [edit] I know that the concept is brilliant, it's a great service, and has great potential. Will investors potentially build chargeable products that use it? Why not just invest more into their product to enhance it?

Google, for example, charges companies for (lots of) use of it's APIs. Maps and up to date, good quality data costs a lot.

Both are good reasons to invest in disruptive technology - to lower the cost in geodata - and to swap to a free mapping service.

See http://switch2osm.org for more case studies and information.

Re: Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation

#76

Post by vidarh »

rmc wrote: post #52
vidarh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That used to be my big caveat with ODBL too. Though the final version of the license differentiates between "Derivative Database" and "Collective Database". Effectively it seems that if your application uses OSM data as one layer, and non-OSM data as separate layers, it would make up a "Collective Database", and you'd only have to release changes to the OSM data itself. That's potentially a huge improvement. The prob…

There are some cases where it's perfectly fine to not have to release the data, like if you, as a company make a map of how much each store makes in revenue, and you want to use OSM. You should not have to release internal, confidential sales data.

Oh, I agree. A startup I've been advising is in the GIS space, and the old OSM license meant they had to use other map sources instead.

On one hand sharing modifications to base layers would not be an issue, but the business model revolves around allowing clients to upload their own layers, many of which they can't release for business reasons or in some cases legal reasons.

The old license meant a lot of effort was wasted on producing own base maps which could've gone into fixing issues with OSM instead (e.g. areas covered by customers include sparsely populated areas where both OSM and Google's maps are severely lacking, but where getting GPS traces of all the local roads that they could release would be easy).

The new license seems to be sufficient for their usage. The problem currently is just that it's vague. E.g. I think it's safe to assume that your example would be ok, but there's still a lot of grey areas. For the company mentioned above, I also think the new license is probably ok, but it'll take some time to review.

While on one hand the new license gives more opportunities for keeping data private in some instances, I think it'll actually result in more data released for the reason that it allows a lot of people that previously would never dare touch OSM data to actually use it, and so gives them a reason to contribute fixes and improvements.

Re: Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation

#77

Post by willrobinson »

rmc wrote: post #71
willrobinson wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure about what I said in my comment, not what you've said in yours. I said they started with free data. And indeed they started with data on the US, not the UK. Everyting begins at home. My point is Maps did not start from zero. Public data got the ball rolling. I cannot say for sure but I would guess it is also what spurred the ideas to bring in a guy they knew who was doing related work at Stanford and also t…

Yes they started in USA, but when UK was announced it wasn't a blank map (like OSM was when it started). The UK maps started with purchased, non-free data. So in a way, you need to bootstrap it somehow.

What was the date they started in the UK? How much cash on hand did they have at that point? A billion or so in the bank maybe?

It all started with public data. Google was born out of a project at Stanford centered around the idea of "online libraries". They had lots of practice using public datasets. The crawlable web is itself a public dataset.

Your point about OSM is the reason I mentioned the generosity of MapQuest.

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