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Why wouldn’t it have a future? We use it quite a lot in the European public sector where we can’t use google maps because of privacy issues. We’ve written a sm

Why wouldn’t it have a future? We use it quite a lot in the European public sector where we can’t use google maps because of privacy issues. We’ve written a small app that does route calculations for us to make reporting business related driving (you get a refund, but that has to be taxed in specific ways) an automated process. We use OSM in that, but we do pay a company to do the routing algorithm and supply the data in a way that doesn’t abuse the standard OSM api. I’m not sure exactly how they do that, I think they host part of OSM or something like that. There is a big industry for small companies which are specialized in those things in Europe, and they are typically cheaper and easier to use than google. We also rely heavily on OSM in our GIS department, where we have our own private maps, though they aren’t so much for traffic we have been building our own “street-view” thing, using OSM and our own 360 images. The disadvantage of OSM is actually the submission process, like if a street is wrong, and you supply the correct information, it’s not always accepted right away. Which is a huge issue if you rely on it for something serious. That hasn’t been an issue for us for two years though, but we did have one week where an elected official couldn’t submit his driving because of a wrong one-way street.

kqr 8y ago
> The disadvantage of OSM is actually the submission process, like if a street is wrong, and you supply the correct information, it’s not always accepted right away. In what way does this happen? I haven't experienced it yet and I get the impression my edits are accepted automatically. Is someone reverting your changes with no good justification?
- sidstling 8y ago
  I had a change denied because I didn’t attach open source evidence, so it was my fault, but because it got contested I couldn’t just redo the change. An account vetting system would solve this. Being an official municipality it’s kind of silly that we can change the actual direction of a street, but not use our internal maps as evidence for it. ;)
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    That shouldn't be a problem as long as you provide sources for a contested change. E.g., a photograph of the road signs, or simply explaining who you are in a comment on the changeset that reverted your edit and providing a screenshot of your internal maps. Most local mappers will gladly work with you in resolving such issues. Try the country-specific subforum on https://forum.openstreetmap.org/ https://forum.openstreetmap.org/ if you get stuck.
rmc 8y ago
> if a street is wrong, and you supply the correct information, it’s not always accepted right away I'm a long time OSMer, and I'm a little confused by this, because OSM is a wiki. There are no data controls. When a user makes a contribution, it's saved into the global OSM database straight away. Can you explain more about what you've experienced?

kqr 8y ago

> The disadvantage of OSM is actually the submission process, like if a street is wrong, and you supply the correct information, it’s not always accepted right away. In what way does this happen? I haven't experienced it yet and I get the impression my edits are accepted automatically. Is someone reverting your changes with no good justification?

sidstling 8y ago
I had a change denied because I didn’t attach open source evidence, so it was my fault, but because it got contested I couldn’t just redo the change. An account vetting system would solve this. Being an official municipality it’s kind of silly that we can change the actual direction of a street, but not use our internal maps as evidence for it. ;)
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  That shouldn't be a problem as long as you provide sources for a contested change. E.g., a photograph of the road signs, or simply explaining who you are in a comment on the changeset that reverted your edit and providing a screenshot of your internal maps. Most local mappers will gladly work with you in resolving such issues. Try the country-specific subforum on https://forum.openstreetmap.org/ https://forum.openstreetmap.org/ if you get stuck.

rmc 8y ago

> if a street is wrong, and you supply the correct information, it’s not always accepted right away I'm a long time OSMer, and I'm a little confused by this, because OSM is a wiki. There are no data controls. When a user makes a contribution, it's saved into the global OSM database straight away. Can you explain more about what you've experienced?