OSM does not fail as a product because it is not trying to be a product and it is not trying to compete! From his twitter it appears that the author is a Faceb

OSM does not fail as a product because it is not trying to be a product and it is not trying to compete! From his twitter it appears that the author is a Facebook employee. Now working (I guess) on Facebook Maps and (probably) on the Mapillary product. The somewhat surprising fact to many is that OpenStreetMap does not need Facebook. If Facebook disappeared, OSM would continue. Think about that again, OSM does not need the participation of any large corporate body to continue. The editors of OpenStreetMap welcome big corporate users of the database but they don't actually seek out or need huge corporate users. Don't get me wrong - OSM editors love that Facebook and Apple use and contribute, there's lots of reasons to praise this. It's like a wikipedia editor who hears that teachers are using their articles in all the nations schools - they are honoured and welcome it, but if the teachers stopped one day the wikipedia editor would still keep on writing those articles! So, OpenStreetMap does not need Facebook or Apple. OpenStreetMap does not need to compete or be a product. Seems to me that I would view that as a big risk for Apple and Facebook. So, lets imagine how two of the FAANG could protect their investments and reduce risks. Would the changes that OpenStreetMap would need to make to be a product and to compete with Google Maps reduce such risk? It seems to me that there might possibly be a push from the FAANG users of OSM to make it into a product, to grow, to be a tech organisation with actual employees, a CEO, a structure, an organisation that is familiar to many in tech and their lawyers, a business one can do business with, create contracts with, make NDAs to, employee people in, write deals with, have a say in the direction of and invest actual money in. Currently there is none of that and I think that might be worrying to FAANG. Even if there's no conscious push from these huge corporations its more probable and it makes more sense to someone with a Silicon Valley mindset that any tech organisation look, behave, and be organised as every other successful tech organisation. It's therefore logical from multiple directions to want OSM to change to become a product company. I would argue that OSM is successful exactly because it is not like a tech organisation.