4 ms·

The Crux of the article I feel: Open Street Maps (OSM) is free and the rest largely aren’t. Conversely the cost of things like Google Maps (as a service not as

The Crux of the article I feel: Open Street Maps (OSM) is free and the rest largely aren’t. Conversely the cost of things like Google Maps (as a service not as a consumer in this context) has risen dramatically so naturally big companies are turning to the free offering more and more and the worry is they will have outsized impact in the project and become the dominant body and their priorities will be pushed forward over others And not a whiff that they are contributing back in substantial ways on the whole either Seems like all giant corporations are one way or another not respecting the spirit of the mission of the organization and often aren’t receptive to community feedback in any substantial way Edit: maybe leeches (that was my previous statement) is harsh, however I stand by my assertion that the spirit of the project isn’t being taken into consideration in this instance. Whenever FaceBook, Apple etc can make it proprietary they will rather than share data and compete on things like user experience. They could do much better in this regard. I don’t believe personally that it’s the developers at that company per se that are the issue this is an issue with industry politics and open source policies etc.

avianlyric 6y ago
> And not a whiff that they are contributing back in substantial ways on the whole either How have you achieved this conclusion when the entire article is about how corporations are contributing back, and the fear that those contributions might cause the devaluation of volunteer contributions? There’s even half a dozen visualisations to demonstrate the extent of their contributions.
- no_wizard 6y ago
  I should clarify: I don’t mean just material code contributions but other contributions too, like monetary, data, being receptive to the community about contributions offered and such. Respecting the ethos is more in line with what I’m talking about It’s a tussle, because I personally came away that the ethos of the community isn’t being respected and the fear is they’ll overrun the mission of the organization. It’s complicated and nuanced to be sure., which is why I amended my original comment
  - kevinventullo 6y ago
    In my experience, it’s not even the ethos of the whole community, it’s the ethos of a few old guard European dudes. Ask nearly any mapper from say Southeast Asia what they think of corporate contributions and I think you get a different answer.
    - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
      There’s some truth in that, but famously the first corporate mapping flare-up in OSM was when Facebook utterly screwed up Thailand.
alex_duf 6y ago
But they are contributing back, that's the point of the article right? So much so the article is more about who controls the organisation. I personally see this mostly as a good thing. More data, better data, and everyone gets value out of it: users and corporations. Surely it's a sign this project is doing things right. However I think it's right that the article points at the power structure of this organisation, I think now more than ever it's important it remains independent.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > But they are contributing back Sometimes they are not contributing. There have been complaints about contractors employed by the big firms adding non-existent roads, tagging roads wrongly, etc. The concern is that because the big firms are so big and now have power over OSM governance, they can simply ignore all those community members who are noticing their persistent mistakes and asking them to stop.
  - warkdarrior 6y ago
    This seems to imply that the corporate members are inserting these mistakes on purpose. I am not convinced this is the case, as I do not see how they could benefit from creating bad maps.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      It is not that they are inserting the mistakes on purpose, but rather the contractors actually doing the edits are not responding to changeset comments saying "Hey, you've been persistently making a tagging error with regard to X, could you please stop?" The big corporate members are so big and powerful, they don't care if their contractors are sometimes violating OSM etiquette and failing to work together with other members of the community.
      - lupire 6y ago
        Can bad mappers be banned? Or is the net value positive even if theyale some errors?
grawprog 6y ago
>Conversely the cost of things like Google Maps (as a service not as a consumer in this context) has risen dramatically so naturally big companies are turning to the free offering more and more and the worry is they will have outsized impact in the project and become the dominant body and their priorities will be pushed forward over others I don't know if this has changed with newer versions of the google maps API, but years ago when I had the choice of using google maps or OSM, the biggest motivator in my decision, when OSM was still a lot less complete, was to do with Google's licensing. There was a clause that implied they'd have some rights to reproduce and use our data and that was totally unacceptable for our use case. OSM was completely free to use without worries that google was somehow going to be able to use our data in some way.

avianlyric 6y ago

> And not a whiff that they are contributing back in substantial ways on the whole either How have you achieved this conclusion when the entire article is about how corporations are contributing back, and the fear that those contributions might cause the devaluation of volunteer contributions? There’s even half a dozen visualisations to demonstrate the extent of their contributions.

no_wizard 6y ago
I should clarify: I don’t mean just material code contributions but other contributions too, like monetary, data, being receptive to the community about contributions offered and such. Respecting the ethos is more in line with what I’m talking about It’s a tussle, because I personally came away that the ethos of the community isn’t being respected and the fear is they’ll overrun the mission of the organization. It’s complicated and nuanced to be sure., which is why I amended my original comment
- kevinventullo 6y ago
  In my experience, it’s not even the ethos of the whole community, it’s the ethos of a few old guard European dudes. Ask nearly any mapper from say Southeast Asia what they think of corporate contributions and I think you get a different answer.
  - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
    There’s some truth in that, but famously the first corporate mapping flare-up in OSM was when Facebook utterly screwed up Thailand.

alex_duf 6y ago

But they are contributing back, that's the point of the article right? So much so the article is more about who controls the organisation. I personally see this mostly as a good thing. More data, better data, and everyone gets value out of it: users and corporations. Surely it's a sign this project is doing things right. However I think it's right that the article points at the power structure of this organisation, I think now more than ever it's important it remains independent.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> But they are contributing back Sometimes they are not contributing. There have been complaints about contractors employed by the big firms adding non-existent roads, tagging roads wrongly, etc. The concern is that because the big firms are so big and now have power over OSM governance, they can simply ignore all those community members who are noticing their persistent mistakes and asking them to stop.
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  This seems to imply that the corporate members are inserting these mistakes on purpose. I am not convinced this is the case, as I do not see how they could benefit from creating bad maps.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    It is not that they are inserting the mistakes on purpose, but rather the contractors actually doing the edits are not responding to changeset comments saying "Hey, you've been persistently making a tagging error with regard to X, could you please stop?" The big corporate members are so big and powerful, they don't care if their contractors are sometimes violating OSM etiquette and failing to work together with other members of the community.
    - lupire 6y ago
      Can bad mappers be banned? Or is the net value positive even if theyale some errors?

grawprog 6y ago

>Conversely the cost of things like Google Maps (as a service not as a consumer in this context) has risen dramatically so naturally big companies are turning to the free offering more and more and the worry is they will have outsized impact in the project and become the dominant body and their priorities will be pushed forward over others I don't know if this has changed with newer versions of the google maps API, but years ago when I had the choice of using google maps or OSM, the biggest motivator in my decision, when OSM was still a lot less complete, was to do with Google's licensing. There was a clause that implied they'd have some rights to reproduce and use our data and that was totally unacceptable for our use case. OSM was completely free to use without worries that google was somehow going to be able to use our data in some way.