33 ms·

Openstreetmap is having a moment

434 points by liotier 6y ago

rathel 6y ago
Regarding corporate contributions: Often the corporations take the route of least resistance - employing dispensable workers who don't live in countries they're mapping [1], and aren't given proper training. It seems that southeast Asia (e.g. Thailand) is the major place for such dubious mapping efforts. [2] There's also a minor conflict of authority: paid mappers (like all mappers) should defer to the community, but they have a manager who they answer to. In my opinion not everyone has the skills to contribute, and at least if they're volunteers you can tell them (politely) to fuck off and be more likely to succeed with it (and not be outnumbered by the army of corporate drones). On-the-ground knowledge is the OSM's gold standard. With megacorps in question routinely spending billions on frivolous stuff, they should have instead equipped the local OSM communities with gear to take 360 photos and GPS loggers to enable those on the ground to survey their local areas. [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Armchair_mapping https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Armchair_mapping [2] https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=46 https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=46 (AFAIR many of people posting here are Western immigrants to Thailand, so take correction for that).
- 1-6 6y ago
  Data has a way of self-cleansing but somewhat agreed. Garbage in, garbage out.
- juliansimioni 6y ago
  Isn't it potentially the opposite? If an independent, volunteer mapper contributes a poor edit, someone from the community has to reach out to them individually. This is hard since there's no prior relationship, and no expectation that the person will even take any advice on editing. Contrast that to a major corporate contributor: the people leading these corporate mapping teams are all talking. Both to each other, and to leaders in the community like prominent volunteers, OpenStreetMap Foundation board members, etc. If a corporate contributor makes a bad edit, one of those _existing relationships_ can be used to help put processes in place that might prevent not just that one individual, but any other contributor paid by that company from making the same error again. IMO at least, that process scales a lot better. And as OSM continues to grow that will be even more valuable than it already is today.
  - Freak_NL 6y ago
    The energy you put in helping a new volunteer mapper along rewards the project in the long run for those who become long-term (semi) frequent contributors. With a corporate mapper you either hit a wall of misunderstanding due to limited English and, excepting English, no map-local language skills, and any time you invest in that mapper is limited in effect, because retention at such jobs seems low. Some companies do listen when you provide feedback, and others just have some community manager¹ who doesn't really know anything at a deeper technical level handling all the communication with OSM's volunteer corps of mappers. There is a company in Minsk that is doing edits worldwide based on the output of a set of slightly outdated linters, and it's disappointing to see that they could get much better feedback and linter input by listening to the remarks made by us volunteers, but that would require the attention of one of the few employees with in-depth knowledge, which they haven't planned for. 1: Another gem of inappropriateness was trying to communicate with the Dutch OSM community via Google Translate mangled Dutch. (The vast majority of us can manage English quite well, thank you.)
    - rathel 6y ago
      The company in question is Rocketdata.io. You pretty much summed up their incompetent modus operandi, let me just add they're a company that maintains a presence of their clients (e.g. retail) at various online maps and business directories alike. See also [1] Having said that, the tool that they use to conflate customers' data with OSM data [2] is interesting, even if it comes with minor performance problems when listing all projects. (Currently returns 502 error, worked fine a few days ago). [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Rocketdata.io#Edits_done_in_violation_of_Import.2FGuidelines https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Rocket... [2] https://osm.rocketdata.io/ https://osm.rocketdata.io/
  - Bqhatevwr 6y ago
    I think one can appeal to the morals and desire to be good/useful with a community mapper, but one cannot with a corporation, especially a publicly traded one. If Facebook decides that the metadata format/style for a particular field should be X because otherwise they'd have to spend $______ of engineering resources on reworking their mobile app and fuck the OSM community which has decided it should be Y, for completely valid reasons that were debated and decided upon by the community....and then all of their hundreds of 10-cents-an-hour drones start submitting changes with the new style...the community is screwed. Especially if it accepts money from Facebook, because there's a power imbalance no matter how much paperwork you have saying "thou shalt not get anything from thy donation." If you want a great example of how corporate involvement corrupts - look at Firefox, which has been caught not only with its hand in the Collecting User Data cookie jar, but inserted software for the makers of a TV show (Mr. Robot) and software nobody asked for, with no way to disable it (Paper, I think it was/is called?) Not only did they get caught with their hand in the Collecting User Data cookie jar, but when someone brought it to the public's attention via the bugtracker, the bug was locked almost immediately by a mozilla employee. Then that was reversed. Then the project manager for said project who had previously worked at a data analytics company re-classified the bug as secret/internal-only, and it quietly all disappeared under the rug.
rubinlinux 6y ago
> OSM is to Wikipedia as an atlas is to an encyclopedia. LOL? OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. Surely?
- kazinator 6y ago
  That makes no difference: OSM <-----> Wikipedia ^ ^ | | | | v v Atlas <-----> Encyclopedia It's just which parallels of the commutativity diagram do you focus on. The map-versus-text operator (left to right), or the digital-versus-dead-tree operator (top down).
  - campchase 6y ago
    Do you think the other version is clearer, though? I think he’s right. I will probably update it.
    - hamandcheese 6y ago
      I had to re-read the original sentence a time or two, but never thought it was outright wrong. I do think OSM : Atlas :: Wikipedia : Encyclopedia is slightly more clear, though.
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      OSM:wikipedia :: atlas : ? - vs - OSM:atlas :: wikipedia: ? Both seem about the same to me(both clear).
  - smegcicle 6y ago
    It's logically equivalent, but it seems much easier to parse that OSM [is digital version of] an atlas vs OSM [is a map instead of text like] Wikipedia
    - joejoebags 6y ago
      Thanks for the feedback, I updated it.
Freak_NL 6y ago
One minor nitpick: measuring the output of a mapper is hard to do on the basis of the number of edits. Local mappers appear to have larger edits where many details in a neighbourhood or some topical regional updates are performed. I think corporate editors focus on fixing bugs and weirdness reported by linters, which are much smaller in scale in terms of changeset size.
- joejoebags 6y ago
  Not a nitpick at all--interesting observation. Can you think of a better metric by which to measure contributions? (I'm truly asking out of ignorance)
  - Freak_NL 6y ago
    Hmm, tough question. You might get a more representative number by adjusting a bit for changeset size, although I'm not sure if this is easily available in bulk data. It would give a more reliable metric at least. On the whole it's hard to measure the impact someone has on the project though. Some people tirelessly keep the documentation wiki up-to-date, or paint bikesheds on the tagging mailinglist. Some fix bugs in JOSM, Carto, and anywhere that comes along their path. Some manage to get governments to agree to license valuable data sources for use in OSM (this one is potentially huge), and again others write JOSM plugins to unlock such data or to scratch a common itch improving the efficiency of hundreds of mappers.¹ There is one mapper in the Netherlands who welcomes all new mappers starting of in the Netherlands: that's an invaluable service hard to quantify in data! 1: Or in my case, build a plugin that a dozen or so folk seem to use once a month. :P
  - rathel 6y ago
    You may have a look at http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Stereo http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Stereo to try and find metrics relevant to you (example profile, to retain privacy profiles are hidden behind an OSM account login-wall, unless said user links to that page in their OSM profile site, which this example user did) One great metric is mapping days (distinct calendar days in which the user was active) which sort of abstracts the fact that different people tend to have a different idea how much work warrants a single changeset.
mxskelly 6y ago
"If you’ve ever ... peaked at the dash of your obnoxious neighbor’s new Tesla…you’ve used OSM." 1. peeked, not peaked 2. Teslas do not use OSM for the on-screen maps. They use Google maps. Tesla only uses OSM for the data regarding parking lot layouts for the automatic parking features, nothing else.
- joejoebags 6y ago
  Ah ha! Thanks, I will make a note of it.
- sliken 6y ago
  I've heard that claimed. But on several occasions tesla owners have found a problem with nav, found the error on OSM, fixed it, and 1-2 months later the Tesla picks up change. From what I can tell Tesla pays some 3rd party to help improve their maps, and apparently on of the data feeds the 3rd party uses is OSM.
- m463 6y ago
  yes there's a google watermark on all maps displayed
afandian 6y ago
I had to look up "having a moment" in American. In British English it means being distracted, having a brain-fade, being a bit down. I think this article probably means the opposite...
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  In American English it can mean either. Usually the use you mentioned would be if you said "I'm having a moment" or something along those lines.
  - afandian 6y ago
    Good to know, thanks. Maybe I'm pre-conditioned to look for idiom-bending uses in blog post titles!
  - ericras 6y ago
    "Needing a moment" or "I need a moment" in American English is the negative version.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      "I'm having a moment" (I'm being dumb, I was being thoughtless, I am confused) and "I need a moment" mean two different negative things to this American.
  - choward 6y ago
    I think it just means something different than the norm. "I'm having a moment" can be something positive in certain contexts.
- pizza 6y ago
  It's interesting because as an American I'd find "having its/their/etc. moment" more common than "having a moment"
- joejoebags 6y ago
  The original title was "WTF is Happening to OpenStreetMap" but I decided it was too clickbait-y. Interesting to learn that I used a uniquely American idiom--didn't realize that.
rayrag 6y ago
I have questions about OSM: 1. Is there any decent OSM app for Windows10 (good UI and offline capabilities is a must-have) 2. How can I display Russian/Chinese/Arabic city names in English? 3. If I create an OSM account will I be able to save routes and addresses? Edit: Thanks for answers.
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  2: The base map on openstreetmap.org renders the local name (endonym), but places above a certain size tend to have English names or romanisations tagged in the data as well. You could try one of the many apps or alternative websites. Remember that OSM is just the database; the data can be rendered in many ways. 3: No, that is a feature you can find in some of the many OSM clients. Osmand is popular I believe.
- jmkb 6y ago
  1. Not currently, the only semi-decent offline OSM map for desktop OS is Gnome Maps. [0] 2. You can't configure the way maps appear on openstreetmap.org. You (or someone) will have to render the map tiles to display all names in English instead of the local language. [1] 3. If you mean keeping a personal list of map and route bookmarks, no. The primary reason to create an OSM account is to contribute data to the map. [0] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Maps https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Maps [1] https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/60673/display-names-in-english https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/60673/display-names...
  - pabs3 6y ago
    GNOME Maps isn't offline like OsmAnd is though, you can't download new tiles, search, navigate etc without network.
    - jmkb 6y ago
      You're quite correct, I should not have described GNOME maps as offline, and my edit window has expired. Rats. OsmAnd+ (or the free OsmAnd~ version available on FDroid) is definitely the primo consumer-facing OSM-powered map. I haven't tried getting it running on desktop via Android emulation but that might be workable. Another desktop app worth mentioning is Garmin's Basecamp, a free download (Windows and Mac) for managing Garmin GPS units. It also functions as a desktop map viewer that supports search and routing, though the interface is a little awkward. You can buy maps from Garmin, but you can also convert OSM data into a Basecamp-compatible format. This is very offline -- for any updates you'll have to pull fresh data, reconvert, reinstall. Or you can find someone else who's done the work for you. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin
joejoebags 6y ago
Hello, HN. On the rare occasion my writing has appeared on the front page, the tone of some anonymous commenters has left me feeling indignant. Last time, someone called me a dog. Please keep in mind that a fellow human wrote this piece! You don't have to be nice, but at least be constructive.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  The internet is the birth place and death place of lots of people's hopes and dreams for making humanity better :)
  - walrus01 6y ago
    https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 In 2004 when that was published it had already been true since, in my opinion, at least 1996...
    - sushshshsh 6y ago
      Ahhahah, yes I completely agree, the moment my opinions are even plausibly associated to my name and people are watching, then I become the politest person possible
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Surely they were just making a wild assumption, because I've been informed that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
  - joejoebags 6y ago
    They made an educated guess—-and they were right.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
walrus01 6y ago
I'd like to add a note here that fully self hosted openstreetmap is a powerful tool. The vector graphic data sets exist freely for anyone to mirror for their own use. The full tool chain of software needed to build your own tile server is available and not very difficult to implement. I'm aware of more than one ISP using openstreetmap for NOC monitoring of outages, individual customer premises endpoint status, and so on.
- folli 6y ago
  Any good tutorials on this? What are the required specs? I assume the dataset is huge?
  - walrus01 6y ago
    https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Slippy_Map https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Slippy_Map https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deploying_your_own_Slippy_Map https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deploying_your_own_Slipp... https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/ https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/ It's small enough that I have a self hosted test tile server in my home office with about 8TB of storage, on a WD hard drive that was shucked out of a USB3 enclosure. https://medium.com/gowombat/self-hosted-open-source-cheap-alternative-for-google-maps-api-services-9a2c2002952b https://medium.com/gowombat/self-hosted-open-source-cheap-al...
    - peterburkimsher 6y ago
      I had a look at self-hosting Nominatim, but got scared away by the hardware requirements. I only have a spare 2015 MacBook Pro 13" with 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of SSD. I only need small countries (New Zealand, Taiwan, Switzerland), but I'm not sure whether this will reduce the system requirements. "A minimum of 2GB of RAM is required or installation will fail. For a full planet import 64GB of RAM or more are strongly recommended. Do not report out of memory problems if you have less than 64GB RAM. For a full planet install you will need at least 800GB of hard disk space (take into account that the OSM database is growing fast). SSD disks will help considerably to speed up import and queries. Even on a well configured machine the import of a full planet takes at least 2 days. Without SSDs 7-8 days are more realistic." [0] I'd also like to render tiles in the OSM Bright theme. The default OpenStreetMap just looks kind of unattractive to me. In the end I just use an old version of Galileo Offline Maps (now Guru Maps) with tiles scraped from Google using MOBAC. [1]. I made MOBAC profiles for every country [2] so I can just re-scrape them when I have a fast Internet connection. [0] https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/admin/Installation/ https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/admin/Installation... [1] https://mobac.sourceforge.io/ https://mobac.sourceforge.io/ [2] https://github.com/peterburk/mobacProfiles https://github.com/peterburk/mobacProfiles
Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
As a long-time OSM contributor (former editing software maintainer, former OSM Foundation board member yadda yadda) I like this piece, because it actually gets the "mutual aid" dynamic between corporate OSM and enthusiast OSM. The two should not be opposed. Rather, the more people are exposed to OSM via Facebook, Apple and so on, the more enthusiast contributors OSM gets. The more rendering tech that Mapbox releases as open source, the more opportunities OSM enthusiasts have to build cool stuff. And so on. We get a fair amount of sniffiness from some of the more corporate types, denigrating enthusiast contributions as just early-stages stuff that should now inevitably give way to AI-assisted machine mapping. So to read a more balanced view like this is genuinely refreshing. _But_ it does require both sides to understand the bargain and play fair, and that doesn't happen as universally as I'd like. There are some among the enthusiast community who are unremittingly hostile to corporate actors beyond what anyone should have to put up with, salaried or not. To some degree that's inevitable when you have a project that attracts single-minded 15-year old Linux geeks, maybe, but that explains rather than excuses. Conversely, corporate OSM too often acts in its short-term interests without a view to the wider good. Attribution is the most notorious example, where Facebook, among others, is basically flouting OSM's attribution requirements. This breaks the "more eyeballs, more contributors" compact. We also see it where corporate editors steamroller some of the nuance from individual contributors' edits (particularly logistics-driven), and I'll confess I'm not a great fan of Mapbox's recent decision to close the source of the dominant in-app renderer, though that's clearly their right to choose. If this thoughtful article helps both "sides" realise that they're better working together than against each other, that would be a win.
- tweetle_beetle 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, is the Facebook infringement well known in the community, but considered too big an issue to broach, not worth putting time into, etc.?
  - throwaway11182 6y ago
    It's not a thing. A few zealots in the OpenStreetMap community want the literal words "OSM Contributors" to appear on any map that uses OpenStreetMap and they complain loudly anytime someone publishes a map that doesn't meet their made-up standard. Facebook maps attribute OpenStreetMap legally.
lapinot 6y ago
Any recommendation for an OSM viewer/querier on linux? Bonus for lightweight and maybe cli stuff. Every couple years i try some of the software listed on the wiki [#] but i'm never convinced. edit: trying foxtrotgps right now, might be the current best edit2: can't get foxtrotgps to build, but gpxsee is an ok viewer. It doesn't seem to have any graphopper search or anything tho, so again, not really convincing. [#] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software/Desktop https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software/Desktop
- pabs3 6y ago
  FTR: FoxtrotGPS needs someone to help migrate it away from Glade and GTK 2, otherwise it is going to disappear from Linux distros in the next few years.
- andrewshadura 6y ago
  GNOME Maps?
- andrewshadura 6y ago
  Also Maps.me, but tricky to build.
  - lapinot 6y ago
    Do you mean https://github.com/mapsme/omim https://github.com/mapsme/omim? It seems like it's a mobile app. Or maybe you run it in anbox?
samcrawford 6y ago
After I did a Show HN about my OSM-powered project (https://trailrouter.com https://trailrouter.com), I saw first hand a little of the positive impact of large corporate involvement in OSM. Two of the very large companies mentioned in the article got in touch with me to find out what what could be done to improve the state of data in OSM useful for pedestrian routing. They were conscious that a disproportionate amount of effort went into supporting motorised vehicles, and wanted to improve the situation. Of course, they were doing so out of self interest too, and openly acknowledged this. But they openly shared their own datasets and offered resources/advice too. The OSM data is so powerful (and I don't mean the map - I'm referring to the tags, which are a hidden gem). I'm all for anything that continues to improve this data.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  > After I did a Show HN about my OSM-powered project (https://trailrouter.com https://trailrouter.com), This is just amazing! I immediately bookmarked and sent it to friends. But I'm not a runner myself, I prefer bikes :) Do you perchance know of something similar for bikes? Though in Sweden, where I live right now, Trail Router would work very well for bikes, too, especially outside cities.
  - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
    cycle.travel (my site!) is OSM-powered bike routing, including a “n km from start point” feature. Always happy to hear comments and suggestions. https://cycle.travel/map https://cycle.travel/map
    - tasuki 6y ago
      Thank you Richard, https://cycle.travel/ https://cycle.travel/ is amazing!
    - schoen 6y ago
      Wow, that's really neat! The suggested routes of a particular length is an awesome feature I've never seen anywhere before. I also like the street name initials concept -- if you're familiar with the cycling routes in an area, you're likely to recognize them.
sleavey 6y ago
I can understand why the tech giants are getting involved in mapping. There are some really cool things being built with OSM and other data, like OpenRouteService [1] (Google Maps navigation for OSM), OpenTopoMap [2] (space shuttle topological data overlaid as contours on OSM), ORBIS [3] (Google Maps navigation for the Roman road network), and loads of detailed maps using OSM data directly but with a particular purpose like OpenRailwayMap [4] and OpenInfrastructureMap [5]. I'd go beyond what the article says about OSM being the atlas to Wikipedia's encyclopedia: I'd say it's becoming the spatial knowledge base equivalent to nothing seen before in history. This truly is an awesome, revolutionary tool that has shown its true potential. I look forward to the awesome things we've not even thought of being built with OSM data, and, I hope, all continuing to be free. [1] https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ [2] https://opentopomap.org/ https://opentopomap.org/ [3] https://orbis.stanford.edu/ https://orbis.stanford.edu/ [4] https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ [5] https://openinframap.org/ https://openinframap.org/
- m463 6y ago
  This may sound silly, but I would use osm + routing more if it had better support for english units (miles/lbs). I wonder if that's not a slight barrier to entry to participate in the community.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    There's lots of different routing engines built with OSM data. The units they expose are an implementation choice. The routing engines available on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ (click the bendy arrow next to the search box on the upper left) do return km. I'm not sure why this stalled out, but it looks like much of the implementation is available: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/1747 https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/...
Paul-ish 6y ago
There's still low hanging fruit in OSM. There are still areas with official government GIS data that hasn't been imported to OSM. For example Irvine County in CA. I wanted to try it but I don't have the GIS skills. It would be nice if someone created a tutorial to teach the bare minimum GIS skills to do an import that is up to OSM standards. Importing whole counties would be a huge boost.
- rathel 6y ago
  Skills are not a real barrier. Data quality and license are. When you look at official datasets, you find ways to screw up you never thought were possible People in USA still complain about the botched TIGER import [1]. It may sound flippant, but I'd rather not have such end-to-end tutorial geared towards imports be made. It'd lower the barrier too much. People who self-taught GIS (it's possible) can be trusted to be marginally more responsible (not fully, though). [1] TL;DR the OSM road networks in USA was initially imported from TIGER dataset. However the importing mappers didn't know TIGER was being updated, state by state. Hence, the quality of imported data is not great in many places.
adrianb 6y ago
It's interesting that all the big tech companies except Google are invested in OSM, but at the same time none of them bought one of the classic, "traditional" digital map makers - Here Maps formerly Nokia, formerly NavTeq and TomTom formerly TeleAtlas. They would certainly have the budget so I wonder why they weren't interested? Do they think it's better to pool their resources into one digital map data source? Are the traditional makers using too much legacy tech?
- matli 6y ago
  One of the issues for the traditional map makers is their ability to keep up with updates. It requires a massive infrastructure to quickly discover and submit all the small changes that goes on in the real world all the time. One of the few viable ways is crowdsourcing. So over time, the traditional maps degrades in quality, while OSM continuously gets better.
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    Does OSM continuously get better faster than it gets worse? A few years ago I started contributing heavily to OSM and found that a lot of the data was out of date or missing. I made some really good maps of my local area but now a few years later a lot of that data is out of date and no one will bother to update it. Google and Apple maps have the advantage that businesses will go and update their own data because its in their own interest to make sure those maps are up to date.
    - labawi 6y ago
      When businesses realize people actually use OSM and updates are 10x easier, they will make sure to keep it up to date, for the same reasons. OSM actually needs less popularity to stay up to date, it's just not there (yet).
      - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
        Do people really use OSM for POI data on any meaningful scale? I tried really hard to use OSM but all the apps were really bad. OSMAnd seemed like the best one but it was super slow rendering on my phone while everything else was snappy. The only use I have seen for OSM data is in 3rd party apps like strava where you only really need street data which is pretty accurate on OSM. Or other specialized cases where you mostly provide your own data.
Havoc 6y ago
Love it. I hope they make their tile servers a little more torrent like. I'd love to chip in but the requirements are just out of my league. Symetrical gigabit sure...but 30TB a month. Don't think my ISP is buying that as residential use. So I'll just stick to seeding linux ISOs...
- stereo 6y ago
  The beta testing of torrents for planet dumps was actually announced just minutes ago: https://twitter.com/OSM_Tech/status/1329182062516051970 https://twitter.com/OSM_Tech/status/1329182062516051970
  - Havoc 6y ago
    Awesome. Thanks for highlighting this.
tppiotrowski 6y ago
It seems that tile hosting is a large business. Apple, Mapbox, Mapzen, Google? all offer free tiers for their tiles that cost big $$$$ once you go over the limit. I have thought about making a generic API for centering a map, adding a marker, etc that would map (pun intended) the instructions onto the respective JS Api (Mapbox.js, MapKit JS, ...) allowing you to rotate between the services on each page load as to not exhaust the free tier as fast. You'll get a slightly different UI each time, but I think people generally know how to use a slippy map. Does this exist? Is anyone interested in something like this?
- resonantjacket5 6y ago
  You'd increase the "free tier" a bit but with the trade-off of much more complex coding. I'm not really sure if I'd be worth it.
  - tppiotrowski 6y ago
    The consumer of this "library" would just configure their Mapbox, Mapzen, Apple API keys and do something like: map.center(23.12, -156.12) map.placeMarker(23.12, -156.12) This would in turn load and display a location marker using either a Google Map, Apple Map, Mapbox, etc on each subsequent load. The complexity would be in implementing it, but using it would be simple.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Leaflet JS is a generic library that works with mapbox and other tileserver apis. So yes you actually could do this trivially right now. The API to tileservers is trivial, you provide a URL template and request the tile with the x/y/zoom you want and the tileserver responds with either a cached tile or it will render it on demand.
  - tppiotrowski 6y ago
    Good point. Leaflet could be another implementation option since Mapbox free tier gives you 50,000 loads of their JS client (unlimited tiles per load) and 750,000 raster tiles. [1] So you could alternate loading Mapbox JS and loading Leaflet with Mapbox tiles. [1] https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/ https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/
RileyJames 6y ago
One of my favourite mapping apps is iOverlander. Basically an offline first wiki build on top of OSM, which I believe contributes back to OSM. Which I guess makes it an OSM client of sorts. I love it because it’s super basic, no monetisation, no bullshit. Without OSM, these things can not exist. (Note the website version isn’t great, but on iOS is works perfectly) http://ioverlander.com/ http://ioverlander.com/ Knowing that more corporate / larger entities are utilising OSM makes me want to contribute more. Primarily because I know my contribution will then be useful in the products I, and my community, use. Unlike google maps, which enables “offering suggestions” of which I can only assume nothing happens (into the black hole of google)
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  iOverlander is a proprietary app. Its database is not freely available outside the app, and fairly little of the information added there makes its way into OpenStreetMap. Also, iOverlander requires Google Play Services, so it isn’t usable on Android distributions that are more privacy-respecting, like LineageOS. As a cycle tourer myself, I agree that iOverlander’s wealth of detail on certain routes is useful, but I really hope it gets superseded by a more libre alternative.
Krasnol 6y ago
I wish those corporate giants would invest into some fresh satellite data for the whole world. With date tags on it. It's really hard to work on remote areas of the planet while it's where I currently have the most fun exploring but sometimes it's just impossible to judge which satellite data provider has the freshest material and even if you find out it's more than often really badly outdated. Unfortunately those big guys probably have no business interest in some backwater districts of Kazakhstan.
urbandw311er 6y ago
Google has some pretty aggressive terms when it comes to mapping: if you obtain data from any of their routing APIs, you are literally forbidden from displaying that route on an OSM map, it can only be displayed on a Google Map. I’ve always found that a bit mean and not really in the spirit of interoperability.
spenrose 6y ago
When I spoke at the Open Source Conference Albania[1], I met a dozen Albanian young adults for whom OSM was an important bridge to developing professional technology skills. Kudos to OSM for providing a wonderful platform for personal growth in communities where it is desperately needed. [1] https://oscal.openlabs.cc https://oscal.openlabs.cc
- stereo 6y ago
  OSCAL is a fantastic conference indeed, and the OSM crowd in Albania is a lot of fun. I hope that it will soon be possible to travel there again.
mdoms 6y ago
Is there a tl;dr? This article is far too meandering.
- joejoebags 6y ago
  lol, you should make one! That might be nice for people who feel similarly.
splonk 6y ago
I hope OSM does well, and I've heard that in some areas (Germany? Various areas in smaller countries that are less well covered? Bike trails and walking trails?) it's notably better than Google Maps. That said, in my neighborhood of San Francisco (the Mission), its business listings are basically straight garbage, and I'm reminded of that every time I use any service that's based on OSM. Lazy Bear is a two Michelin starred restaurant that's been in its current location since 2014. By any reasonable measure it's a significant business in the area. OSM still thinks it's the barbeque place that used to be there. Within a two block radius I count maybe 5-6 places that OSM promotes to having a label on the map that have been closed for over a year. I used to work on business listings in mapping products so I have some idea of how difficult keeping business listings up to date is, but OSM is so bad that it wrecks my motivation to fix the data because I just can't fathom ever using it in my local area.
- int_19h 6y ago
  In US, I find that OSM maps are the best when it comes to backcountry. Google maps have the major hiking trails, for example - but when you see the same area in OSM, there's a lot more connecting trails etc, and it also marks swamps and other terrain features. (Apple and Bing maps are even worse than Google in that regard.)
  - spurgu 6y ago
    > Google maps have the major hiking trails, for example - but when you see the same area in OSM, there's a lot more connecting trails etc Same in Europe for the locations I've checked.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Maybe just do 1 a week or something? Establish a little bit of momentum in the right direction without investing too much in something might not amount to anything.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
This post inspired me to look around the neighborhood and fix up all the broken stores. Tools have improved greatly since I was here... 10 years ago!
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  If you have Android and you are interested in occasional mapping then I really recommend StreetComplete. Registering for OSM account is the biggest hurdle, mapping with this app requires no tutorials/learning how to use it etc. dislaimer: this is partialy autopromotion, this app is allowing to make some predefined edits adding detail - it is not a full scale editor
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
As someone who has been editing OSM for over 4 years now with thousands of edits in my hometown, its really interesting to have now big players come in and contribute to this project. Almost always otherwise the situation is reversed. They build a competing product and extend that version only. Here they are contributing together because the competition aka Google maps is still far ahead in terms of names and addresses and buildings and stuff. Still, I do my bit so yeah
int_19h 6y ago
I just wish somebody made a desktop port of OsmAnd. I'd pay for that.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  There is one. https://sourceforge.net/projects/offroadosm/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/offroadosm/
  - int_19h 6y ago
    That's the only one I'm aware of, as well, but it's hardly feature-complete compared to OsmAnd mobile apps, and there are no new releases for well over a year.
M2Ys4U 6y ago
>For instance: I work for a company called Azavea that, among many noble efforts, maintains Cicero. It’s a database of elected officials and legislative districts in several countries around the world that gets updated daily. You can imagine that this should be a public good — like, doesn’t the government already have this information? Turns out…nah. Cicero requires ceaseless, grueling work to keep updated, and that means serious investment of time and money. FWIW there is a crowd-sourced database of politicians on WikiData,[0] if anyone wants to take part in that project. [0] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_every_politician https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_every_pol...
- joejoebags 6y ago
  Interesting, I wasn't aware of this! I'm sure my colleagues on the Cicero team are, though.
webmaven 6y ago
Are there any services or open source tools or components centered on using OSM data for games (especially for so-called GPS RPGs like Ingress)?
- joejoebags 6y ago
  Yes, via Mapbox's partnership with Unity https://www.mapbox.com/unity https://www.mapbox.com/unity
known 6y ago
I think OSM should some how connect to Android devices to get better output;

434 points by liotier 6y ago

Regarding corporate contributions: Often the corporations take the route of least resistance - employing dispensable workers who don't live in countries they're mapping [1], and aren't given proper training. It seems that southeast Asia (e.g. Thailand) is the major place for such dubious mapping efforts. [2] There's also a minor conflict of authority: paid mappers (like all mappers) should defer to the community, but they have a manager who they answer to. In my opinion not everyone has the skills to contribute, and at least if they're volunteers you can tell them (politely) to fuck off and be more likely to succeed with it (and not be outnumbered by the army of corporate drones). On-the-ground knowledge is the OSM's gold standard. With megacorps in question routinely spending billions on frivolous stuff, they should have instead equipped the local OSM communities with gear to take 360 photos and GPS loggers to enable those on the ground to survey their local areas. [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Armchair_mapping https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Armchair_mapping [2] https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=46 https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=46 (AFAIR many of people posting here are Western immigrants to Thailand, so take correction for that).

1-6 6y ago
Data has a way of self-cleansing but somewhat agreed. Garbage in, garbage out.
juliansimioni 6y ago
Isn't it potentially the opposite? If an independent, volunteer mapper contributes a poor edit, someone from the community has to reach out to them individually. This is hard since there's no prior relationship, and no expectation that the person will even take any advice on editing. Contrast that to a major corporate contributor: the people leading these corporate mapping teams are all talking. Both to each other, and to leaders in the community like prominent volunteers, OpenStreetMap Foundation board members, etc. If a corporate contributor makes a bad edit, one of those _existing relationships_ can be used to help put processes in place that might prevent not just that one individual, but any other contributor paid by that company from making the same error again. IMO at least, that process scales a lot better. And as OSM continues to grow that will be even more valuable than it already is today.
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  The energy you put in helping a new volunteer mapper along rewards the project in the long run for those who become long-term (semi) frequent contributors. With a corporate mapper you either hit a wall of misunderstanding due to limited English and, excepting English, no map-local language skills, and any time you invest in that mapper is limited in effect, because retention at such jobs seems low. Some companies do listen when you provide feedback, and others just have some community manager¹ who doesn't really know anything at a deeper technical level handling all the communication with OSM's volunteer corps of mappers. There is a company in Minsk that is doing edits worldwide based on the output of a set of slightly outdated linters, and it's disappointing to see that they could get much better feedback and linter input by listening to the remarks made by us volunteers, but that would require the attention of one of the few employees with in-depth knowledge, which they haven't planned for. 1: Another gem of inappropriateness was trying to communicate with the Dutch OSM community via Google Translate mangled Dutch. (The vast majority of us can manage English quite well, thank you.)
  - rathel 6y ago
    The company in question is Rocketdata.io. You pretty much summed up their incompetent modus operandi, let me just add they're a company that maintains a presence of their clients (e.g. retail) at various online maps and business directories alike. See also [1] Having said that, the tool that they use to conflate customers' data with OSM data [2] is interesting, even if it comes with minor performance problems when listing all projects. (Currently returns 502 error, worked fine a few days ago). [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Rocketdata.io#Edits_done_in_violation_of_Import.2FGuidelines https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Rocket... [2] https://osm.rocketdata.io/ https://osm.rocketdata.io/
- Bqhatevwr 6y ago
  I think one can appeal to the morals and desire to be good/useful with a community mapper, but one cannot with a corporation, especially a publicly traded one. If Facebook decides that the metadata format/style for a particular field should be X because otherwise they'd have to spend $______ of engineering resources on reworking their mobile app and fuck the OSM community which has decided it should be Y, for completely valid reasons that were debated and decided upon by the community....and then all of their hundreds of 10-cents-an-hour drones start submitting changes with the new style...the community is screwed. Especially if it accepts money from Facebook, because there's a power imbalance no matter how much paperwork you have saying "thou shalt not get anything from thy donation." If you want a great example of how corporate involvement corrupts - look at Firefox, which has been caught not only with its hand in the Collecting User Data cookie jar, but inserted software for the makers of a TV show (Mr. Robot) and software nobody asked for, with no way to disable it (Paper, I think it was/is called?) Not only did they get caught with their hand in the Collecting User Data cookie jar, but when someone brought it to the public's attention via the bugtracker, the bug was locked almost immediately by a mozilla employee. Then that was reversed. Then the project manager for said project who had previously worked at a data analytics company re-classified the bug as secret/internal-only, and it quietly all disappeared under the rug.

rubinlinux 6y ago

> OSM is to Wikipedia as an atlas is to an encyclopedia. LOL? OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. Surely?

kazinator 6y ago
That makes no difference: OSM <-----> Wikipedia ^ ^ | | | | v v Atlas <-----> Encyclopedia It's just which parallels of the commutativity diagram do you focus on. The map-versus-text operator (left to right), or the digital-versus-dead-tree operator (top down).
- campchase 6y ago
  Do you think the other version is clearer, though? I think he’s right. I will probably update it.
  - hamandcheese 6y ago
    I had to re-read the original sentence a time or two, but never thought it was outright wrong. I do think OSM : Atlas :: Wikipedia : Encyclopedia is slightly more clear, though.
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    OSM:wikipedia :: atlas : ? - vs - OSM:atlas :: wikipedia: ? Both seem about the same to me(both clear).
- smegcicle 6y ago
  It's logically equivalent, but it seems much easier to parse that OSM [is digital version of] an atlas vs OSM [is a map instead of text like] Wikipedia
  - joejoebags 6y ago
    Thanks for the feedback, I updated it.

Freak_NL 6y ago

One minor nitpick: measuring the output of a mapper is hard to do on the basis of the number of edits. Local mappers appear to have larger edits where many details in a neighbourhood or some topical regional updates are performed. I think corporate editors focus on fixing bugs and weirdness reported by linters, which are much smaller in scale in terms of changeset size.

joejoebags 6y ago
Not a nitpick at all--interesting observation. Can you think of a better metric by which to measure contributions? (I'm truly asking out of ignorance)
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  Hmm, tough question. You might get a more representative number by adjusting a bit for changeset size, although I'm not sure if this is easily available in bulk data. It would give a more reliable metric at least. On the whole it's hard to measure the impact someone has on the project though. Some people tirelessly keep the documentation wiki up-to-date, or paint bikesheds on the tagging mailinglist. Some fix bugs in JOSM, Carto, and anywhere that comes along their path. Some manage to get governments to agree to license valuable data sources for use in OSM (this one is potentially huge), and again others write JOSM plugins to unlock such data or to scratch a common itch improving the efficiency of hundreds of mappers.¹ There is one mapper in the Netherlands who welcomes all new mappers starting of in the Netherlands: that's an invaluable service hard to quantify in data! 1: Or in my case, build a plugin that a dozen or so folk seem to use once a month. :P
- rathel 6y ago
  You may have a look at http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Stereo http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Stereo to try and find metrics relevant to you (example profile, to retain privacy profiles are hidden behind an OSM account login-wall, unless said user links to that page in their OSM profile site, which this example user did) One great metric is mapping days (distinct calendar days in which the user was active) which sort of abstracts the fact that different people tend to have a different idea how much work warrants a single changeset.

mxskelly 6y ago

"If you’ve ever ... peaked at the dash of your obnoxious neighbor’s new Tesla…you’ve used OSM." 1. peeked, not peaked 2. Teslas do not use OSM for the on-screen maps. They use Google maps. Tesla only uses OSM for the data regarding parking lot layouts for the automatic parking features, nothing else.

joejoebags 6y ago
Ah ha! Thanks, I will make a note of it.
sliken 6y ago
I've heard that claimed. But on several occasions tesla owners have found a problem with nav, found the error on OSM, fixed it, and 1-2 months later the Tesla picks up change. From what I can tell Tesla pays some 3rd party to help improve their maps, and apparently on of the data feeds the 3rd party uses is OSM.
m463 6y ago
yes there's a google watermark on all maps displayed

afandian 6y ago

I had to look up "having a moment" in American. In British English it means being distracted, having a brain-fade, being a bit down. I think this article probably means the opposite...

whimsicalism 6y ago
In American English it can mean either. Usually the use you mentioned would be if you said "I'm having a moment" or something along those lines.
- afandian 6y ago
  Good to know, thanks. Maybe I'm pre-conditioned to look for idiom-bending uses in blog post titles!
- ericras 6y ago
  "Needing a moment" or "I need a moment" in American English is the negative version.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    "I'm having a moment" (I'm being dumb, I was being thoughtless, I am confused) and "I need a moment" mean two different negative things to this American.
- choward 6y ago
  I think it just means something different than the norm. "I'm having a moment" can be something positive in certain contexts.
pizza 6y ago
It's interesting because as an American I'd find "having its/their/etc. moment" more common than "having a moment"
joejoebags 6y ago
The original title was "WTF is Happening to OpenStreetMap" but I decided it was too clickbait-y. Interesting to learn that I used a uniquely American idiom--didn't realize that.

rayrag 6y ago

I have questions about OSM: 1. Is there any decent OSM app for Windows10 (good UI and offline capabilities is a must-have) 2. How can I display Russian/Chinese/Arabic city names in English? 3. If I create an OSM account will I be able to save routes and addresses? Edit: Thanks for answers.

Freak_NL 6y ago
2: The base map on openstreetmap.org renders the local name (endonym), but places above a certain size tend to have English names or romanisations tagged in the data as well. You could try one of the many apps or alternative websites. Remember that OSM is just the database; the data can be rendered in many ways. 3: No, that is a feature you can find in some of the many OSM clients. Osmand is popular I believe.
jmkb 6y ago
1. Not currently, the only semi-decent offline OSM map for desktop OS is Gnome Maps. [0] 2. You can't configure the way maps appear on openstreetmap.org. You (or someone) will have to render the map tiles to display all names in English instead of the local language. [1] 3. If you mean keeping a personal list of map and route bookmarks, no. The primary reason to create an OSM account is to contribute data to the map. [0] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Maps https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Maps [1] https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/60673/display-names-in-english https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/60673/display-names...
- pabs3 6y ago
  GNOME Maps isn't offline like OsmAnd is though, you can't download new tiles, search, navigate etc without network.
  - jmkb 6y ago
    You're quite correct, I should not have described GNOME maps as offline, and my edit window has expired. Rats. OsmAnd+ (or the free OsmAnd~ version available on FDroid) is definitely the primo consumer-facing OSM-powered map. I haven't tried getting it running on desktop via Android emulation but that might be workable. Another desktop app worth mentioning is Garmin's Basecamp, a free download (Windows and Mac) for managing Garmin GPS units. It also functions as a desktop map viewer that supports search and routing, though the interface is a little awkward. You can buy maps from Garmin, but you can also convert OSM data into a Basecamp-compatible format. This is very offline -- for any updates you'll have to pull fresh data, reconvert, reinstall. Or you can find someone else who's done the work for you. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin

joejoebags 6y ago

Hello, HN. On the rare occasion my writing has appeared on the front page, the tone of some anonymous commenters has left me feeling indignant. Last time, someone called me a dog. Please keep in mind that a fellow human wrote this piece! You don't have to be nice, but at least be constructive.

sushshshsh 6y ago
The internet is the birth place and death place of lots of people's hopes and dreams for making humanity better :)
- walrus01 6y ago
  https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 In 2004 when that was published it had already been true since, in my opinion, at least 1996...
  - sushshshsh 6y ago
    Ahhahah, yes I completely agree, the moment my opinions are even plausibly associated to my name and people are watching, then I become the politest person possible
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
oh_sigh 6y ago
Surely they were just making a wild assumption, because I've been informed that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
- joejoebags 6y ago
  They made an educated guess—-and they were right.
CameronNemo 6y ago

walrus01 6y ago

I'd like to add a note here that fully self hosted openstreetmap is a powerful tool. The vector graphic data sets exist freely for anyone to mirror for their own use. The full tool chain of software needed to build your own tile server is available and not very difficult to implement. I'm aware of more than one ISP using openstreetmap for NOC monitoring of outages, individual customer premises endpoint status, and so on.

folli 6y ago
Any good tutorials on this? What are the required specs? I assume the dataset is huge?
- walrus01 6y ago
  https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Slippy_Map https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Slippy_Map https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deploying_your_own_Slippy_Map https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deploying_your_own_Slipp... https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/ https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/ It's small enough that I have a self hosted test tile server in my home office with about 8TB of storage, on a WD hard drive that was shucked out of a USB3 enclosure. https://medium.com/gowombat/self-hosted-open-source-cheap-alternative-for-google-maps-api-services-9a2c2002952b https://medium.com/gowombat/self-hosted-open-source-cheap-al...
  - peterburkimsher 6y ago
    I had a look at self-hosting Nominatim, but got scared away by the hardware requirements. I only have a spare 2015 MacBook Pro 13" with 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of SSD. I only need small countries (New Zealand, Taiwan, Switzerland), but I'm not sure whether this will reduce the system requirements. "A minimum of 2GB of RAM is required or installation will fail. For a full planet import 64GB of RAM or more are strongly recommended. Do not report out of memory problems if you have less than 64GB RAM. For a full planet install you will need at least 800GB of hard disk space (take into account that the OSM database is growing fast). SSD disks will help considerably to speed up import and queries. Even on a well configured machine the import of a full planet takes at least 2 days. Without SSDs 7-8 days are more realistic." [0] I'd also like to render tiles in the OSM Bright theme. The default OpenStreetMap just looks kind of unattractive to me. In the end I just use an old version of Galileo Offline Maps (now Guru Maps) with tiles scraped from Google using MOBAC. [1]. I made MOBAC profiles for every country [2] so I can just re-scrape them when I have a fast Internet connection. [0] https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/admin/Installation/ https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/admin/Installation... [1] https://mobac.sourceforge.io/ https://mobac.sourceforge.io/ [2] https://github.com/peterburk/mobacProfiles https://github.com/peterburk/mobacProfiles

Doctor_Fegg 6y ago

As a long-time OSM contributor (former editing software maintainer, former OSM Foundation board member yadda yadda) I like this piece, because it actually gets the "mutual aid" dynamic between corporate OSM and enthusiast OSM. The two should not be opposed. Rather, the more people are exposed to OSM via Facebook, Apple and so on, the more enthusiast contributors OSM gets. The more rendering tech that Mapbox releases as open source, the more opportunities OSM enthusiasts have to build cool stuff. And so on. We get a fair amount of sniffiness from some of the more corporate types, denigrating enthusiast contributions as just early-stages stuff that should now inevitably give way to AI-assisted machine mapping. So to read a more balanced view like this is genuinely refreshing. _But_ it does require both sides to understand the bargain and play fair, and that doesn't happen as universally as I'd like. There are some among the enthusiast community who are unremittingly hostile to corporate actors beyond what anyone should have to put up with, salaried or not. To some degree that's inevitable when you have a project that attracts single-minded 15-year old Linux geeks, maybe, but that explains rather than excuses. Conversely, corporate OSM too often acts in its short-term interests without a view to the wider good. Attribution is the most notorious example, where Facebook, among others, is basically flouting OSM's attribution requirements. This breaks the "more eyeballs, more contributors" compact. We also see it where corporate editors steamroller some of the nuance from individual contributors' edits (particularly logistics-driven), and I'll confess I'm not a great fan of Mapbox's recent decision to close the source of the dominant in-app renderer, though that's clearly their right to choose. If this thoughtful article helps both "sides" realise that they're better working together than against each other, that would be a win.

tweetle_beetle 6y ago
Out of curiosity, is the Facebook infringement well known in the community, but considered too big an issue to broach, not worth putting time into, etc.?
- throwaway11182 6y ago
  It's not a thing. A few zealots in the OpenStreetMap community want the literal words "OSM Contributors" to appear on any map that uses OpenStreetMap and they complain loudly anytime someone publishes a map that doesn't meet their made-up standard. Facebook maps attribute OpenStreetMap legally.

lapinot 6y ago

Any recommendation for an OSM viewer/querier on linux? Bonus for lightweight and maybe cli stuff. Every couple years i try some of the software listed on the wiki [#] but i'm never convinced. edit: trying foxtrotgps right now, might be the current best edit2: can't get foxtrotgps to build, but gpxsee is an ok viewer. It doesn't seem to have any graphopper search or anything tho, so again, not really convincing. [#] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software/Desktop https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software/Desktop

pabs3 6y ago
FTR: FoxtrotGPS needs someone to help migrate it away from Glade and GTK 2, otherwise it is going to disappear from Linux distros in the next few years.
andrewshadura 6y ago
GNOME Maps?
andrewshadura 6y ago
Also Maps.me, but tricky to build.
- lapinot 6y ago
  Do you mean https://github.com/mapsme/omim https://github.com/mapsme/omim? It seems like it's a mobile app. Or maybe you run it in anbox?

samcrawford 6y ago

After I did a Show HN about my OSM-powered project (https://trailrouter.com https://trailrouter.com), I saw first hand a little of the positive impact of large corporate involvement in OSM. Two of the very large companies mentioned in the article got in touch with me to find out what what could be done to improve the state of data in OSM useful for pedestrian routing. They were conscious that a disproportionate amount of effort went into supporting motorised vehicles, and wanted to improve the situation. Of course, they were doing so out of self interest too, and openly acknowledged this. But they openly shared their own datasets and offered resources/advice too. The OSM data is so powerful (and I don't mean the map - I'm referring to the tags, which are a hidden gem). I'm all for anything that continues to improve this data.

dmitriid 6y ago
> After I did a Show HN about my OSM-powered project (https://trailrouter.com https://trailrouter.com), This is just amazing! I immediately bookmarked and sent it to friends. But I'm not a runner myself, I prefer bikes :) Do you perchance know of something similar for bikes? Though in Sweden, where I live right now, Trail Router would work very well for bikes, too, especially outside cities.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
  cycle.travel (my site!) is OSM-powered bike routing, including a “n km from start point” feature. Always happy to hear comments and suggestions. https://cycle.travel/map https://cycle.travel/map
  - tasuki 6y ago
    Thank you Richard, https://cycle.travel/ https://cycle.travel/ is amazing!
  - schoen 6y ago
    Wow, that's really neat! The suggested routes of a particular length is an awesome feature I've never seen anywhere before. I also like the street name initials concept -- if you're familiar with the cycling routes in an area, you're likely to recognize them.

sleavey 6y ago

I can understand why the tech giants are getting involved in mapping. There are some really cool things being built with OSM and other data, like OpenRouteService [1] (Google Maps navigation for OSM), OpenTopoMap [2] (space shuttle topological data overlaid as contours on OSM), ORBIS [3] (Google Maps navigation for the Roman road network), and loads of detailed maps using OSM data directly but with a particular purpose like OpenRailwayMap [4] and OpenInfrastructureMap [5]. I'd go beyond what the article says about OSM being the atlas to Wikipedia's encyclopedia: I'd say it's becoming the spatial knowledge base equivalent to nothing seen before in history. This truly is an awesome, revolutionary tool that has shown its true potential. I look forward to the awesome things we've not even thought of being built with OSM data, and, I hope, all continuing to be free. [1] https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ [2] https://opentopomap.org/ https://opentopomap.org/ [3] https://orbis.stanford.edu/ https://orbis.stanford.edu/ [4] https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ [5] https://openinframap.org/ https://openinframap.org/

m463 6y ago
This may sound silly, but I would use osm + routing more if it had better support for english units (miles/lbs). I wonder if that's not a slight barrier to entry to participate in the community.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  There's lots of different routing engines built with OSM data. The units they expose are an implementation choice. The routing engines available on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ (click the bendy arrow next to the search box on the upper left) do return km. I'm not sure why this stalled out, but it looks like much of the implementation is available: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/1747 https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/...

Paul-ish 6y ago

There's still low hanging fruit in OSM. There are still areas with official government GIS data that hasn't been imported to OSM. For example Irvine County in CA. I wanted to try it but I don't have the GIS skills. It would be nice if someone created a tutorial to teach the bare minimum GIS skills to do an import that is up to OSM standards. Importing whole counties would be a huge boost.

rathel 6y ago
Skills are not a real barrier. Data quality and license are. When you look at official datasets, you find ways to screw up you never thought were possible People in USA still complain about the botched TIGER import [1]. It may sound flippant, but I'd rather not have such end-to-end tutorial geared towards imports be made. It'd lower the barrier too much. People who self-taught GIS (it's possible) can be trusted to be marginally more responsible (not fully, though). [1] TL;DR the OSM road networks in USA was initially imported from TIGER dataset. However the importing mappers didn't know TIGER was being updated, state by state. Hence, the quality of imported data is not great in many places.

adrianb 6y ago

It's interesting that all the big tech companies except Google are invested in OSM, but at the same time none of them bought one of the classic, "traditional" digital map makers - Here Maps formerly Nokia, formerly NavTeq and TomTom formerly TeleAtlas. They would certainly have the budget so I wonder why they weren't interested? Do they think it's better to pool their resources into one digital map data source? Are the traditional makers using too much legacy tech?

matli 6y ago
One of the issues for the traditional map makers is their ability to keep up with updates. It requires a massive infrastructure to quickly discover and submit all the small changes that goes on in the real world all the time. One of the few viable ways is crowdsourcing. So over time, the traditional maps degrades in quality, while OSM continuously gets better.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Does OSM continuously get better faster than it gets worse? A few years ago I started contributing heavily to OSM and found that a lot of the data was out of date or missing. I made some really good maps of my local area but now a few years later a lot of that data is out of date and no one will bother to update it. Google and Apple maps have the advantage that businesses will go and update their own data because its in their own interest to make sure those maps are up to date.
  - labawi 6y ago
    When businesses realize people actually use OSM and updates are 10x easier, they will make sure to keep it up to date, for the same reasons. OSM actually needs less popularity to stay up to date, it's just not there (yet).
    - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
      Do people really use OSM for POI data on any meaningful scale? I tried really hard to use OSM but all the apps were really bad. OSMAnd seemed like the best one but it was super slow rendering on my phone while everything else was snappy. The only use I have seen for OSM data is in 3rd party apps like strava where you only really need street data which is pretty accurate on OSM. Or other specialized cases where you mostly provide your own data.

Havoc 6y ago

Love it. I hope they make their tile servers a little more torrent like. I'd love to chip in but the requirements are just out of my league. Symetrical gigabit sure...but 30TB a month. Don't think my ISP is buying that as residential use. So I'll just stick to seeding linux ISOs...

stereo 6y ago
The beta testing of torrents for planet dumps was actually announced just minutes ago: https://twitter.com/OSM_Tech/status/1329182062516051970 https://twitter.com/OSM_Tech/status/1329182062516051970
- Havoc 6y ago
  Awesome. Thanks for highlighting this.

tppiotrowski 6y ago

It seems that tile hosting is a large business. Apple, Mapbox, Mapzen, Google? all offer free tiers for their tiles that cost big $$$$ once you go over the limit. I have thought about making a generic API for centering a map, adding a marker, etc that would map (pun intended) the instructions onto the respective JS Api (Mapbox.js, MapKit JS, ...) allowing you to rotate between the services on each page load as to not exhaust the free tier as fast. You'll get a slightly different UI each time, but I think people generally know how to use a slippy map. Does this exist? Is anyone interested in something like this?

resonantjacket5 6y ago
You'd increase the "free tier" a bit but with the trade-off of much more complex coding. I'm not really sure if I'd be worth it.
- tppiotrowski 6y ago
  The consumer of this "library" would just configure their Mapbox, Mapzen, Apple API keys and do something like: map.center(23.12, -156.12) map.placeMarker(23.12, -156.12) This would in turn load and display a location marker using either a Google Map, Apple Map, Mapbox, etc on each subsequent load. The complexity would be in implementing it, but using it would be simple.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
Leaflet JS is a generic library that works with mapbox and other tileserver apis. So yes you actually could do this trivially right now. The API to tileservers is trivial, you provide a URL template and request the tile with the x/y/zoom you want and the tileserver responds with either a cached tile or it will render it on demand.
- tppiotrowski 6y ago
  Good point. Leaflet could be another implementation option since Mapbox free tier gives you 50,000 loads of their JS client (unlimited tiles per load) and 750,000 raster tiles. [1] So you could alternate loading Mapbox JS and loading Leaflet with Mapbox tiles. [1] https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/ https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/

RileyJames 6y ago

One of my favourite mapping apps is iOverlander. Basically an offline first wiki build on top of OSM, which I believe contributes back to OSM. Which I guess makes it an OSM client of sorts. I love it because it’s super basic, no monetisation, no bullshit. Without OSM, these things can not exist. (Note the website version isn’t great, but on iOS is works perfectly) http://ioverlander.com/ http://ioverlander.com/ Knowing that more corporate / larger entities are utilising OSM makes me want to contribute more. Primarily because I know my contribution will then be useful in the products I, and my community, use. Unlike google maps, which enables “offering suggestions” of which I can only assume nothing happens (into the black hole of google)

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
iOverlander is a proprietary app. Its database is not freely available outside the app, and fairly little of the information added there makes its way into OpenStreetMap. Also, iOverlander requires Google Play Services, so it isn’t usable on Android distributions that are more privacy-respecting, like LineageOS. As a cycle tourer myself, I agree that iOverlander’s wealth of detail on certain routes is useful, but I really hope it gets superseded by a more libre alternative.

Krasnol 6y ago

I wish those corporate giants would invest into some fresh satellite data for the whole world. With date tags on it. It's really hard to work on remote areas of the planet while it's where I currently have the most fun exploring but sometimes it's just impossible to judge which satellite data provider has the freshest material and even if you find out it's more than often really badly outdated. Unfortunately those big guys probably have no business interest in some backwater districts of Kazakhstan.

urbandw311er 6y ago

Google has some pretty aggressive terms when it comes to mapping: if you obtain data from any of their routing APIs, you are literally forbidden from displaying that route on an OSM map, it can only be displayed on a Google Map. I’ve always found that a bit mean and not really in the spirit of interoperability.

spenrose 6y ago

When I spoke at the Open Source Conference Albania[1], I met a dozen Albanian young adults for whom OSM was an important bridge to developing professional technology skills. Kudos to OSM for providing a wonderful platform for personal growth in communities where it is desperately needed. [1] https://oscal.openlabs.cc https://oscal.openlabs.cc

stereo 6y ago
OSCAL is a fantastic conference indeed, and the OSM crowd in Albania is a lot of fun. I hope that it will soon be possible to travel there again.

mdoms 6y ago

Is there a tl;dr? This article is far too meandering.

joejoebags 6y ago
lol, you should make one! That might be nice for people who feel similarly.

splonk 6y ago

I hope OSM does well, and I've heard that in some areas (Germany? Various areas in smaller countries that are less well covered? Bike trails and walking trails?) it's notably better than Google Maps. That said, in my neighborhood of San Francisco (the Mission), its business listings are basically straight garbage, and I'm reminded of that every time I use any service that's based on OSM. Lazy Bear is a two Michelin starred restaurant that's been in its current location since 2014. By any reasonable measure it's a significant business in the area. OSM still thinks it's the barbeque place that used to be there. Within a two block radius I count maybe 5-6 places that OSM promotes to having a label on the map that have been closed for over a year. I used to work on business listings in mapping products so I have some idea of how difficult keeping business listings up to date is, but OSM is so bad that it wrecks my motivation to fix the data because I just can't fathom ever using it in my local area.

int_19h 6y ago
In US, I find that OSM maps are the best when it comes to backcountry. Google maps have the major hiking trails, for example - but when you see the same area in OSM, there's a lot more connecting trails etc, and it also marks swamps and other terrain features. (Apple and Bing maps are even worse than Google in that regard.)
- spurgu 6y ago
  > Google maps have the major hiking trails, for example - but when you see the same area in OSM, there's a lot more connecting trails etc Same in Europe for the locations I've checked.
maxerickson 6y ago
Maybe just do 1 a week or something? Establish a little bit of momentum in the right direction without investing too much in something might not amount to anything.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

This post inspired me to look around the neighborhood and fix up all the broken stores. Tools have improved greatly since I was here... 10 years ago!

matkoniecz 6y ago
If you have Android and you are interested in occasional mapping then I really recommend StreetComplete. Registering for OSM account is the biggest hurdle, mapping with this app requires no tutorials/learning how to use it etc. dislaimer: this is partialy autopromotion, this app is allowing to make some predefined edits adding detail - it is not a full scale editor

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

As someone who has been editing OSM for over 4 years now with thousands of edits in my hometown, its really interesting to have now big players come in and contribute to this project. Almost always otherwise the situation is reversed. They build a competing product and extend that version only. Here they are contributing together because the competition aka Google maps is still far ahead in terms of names and addresses and buildings and stuff. Still, I do my bit so yeah

int_19h 6y ago

I just wish somebody made a desktop port of OsmAnd. I'd pay for that.

maxerickson 6y ago
There is one. https://sourceforge.net/projects/offroadosm/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/offroadosm/
- int_19h 6y ago
  That's the only one I'm aware of, as well, but it's hardly feature-complete compared to OsmAnd mobile apps, and there are no new releases for well over a year.

M2Ys4U 6y ago

>For instance: I work for a company called Azavea that, among many noble efforts, maintains Cicero. It’s a database of elected officials and legislative districts in several countries around the world that gets updated daily. You can imagine that this should be a public good — like, doesn’t the government already have this information? Turns out…nah. Cicero requires ceaseless, grueling work to keep updated, and that means serious investment of time and money. FWIW there is a crowd-sourced database of politicians on WikiData,[0] if anyone wants to take part in that project. [0] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_every_politician https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_every_pol...

joejoebags 6y ago
Interesting, I wasn't aware of this! I'm sure my colleagues on the Cicero team are, though.

webmaven 6y ago

Are there any services or open source tools or components centered on using OSM data for games (especially for so-called GPS RPGs like Ingress)?

joejoebags 6y ago
Yes, via Mapbox's partnership with Unity https://www.mapbox.com/unity https://www.mapbox.com/unity

known 6y ago

I think OSM should some how connect to Android devices to get better output;