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It sounds like TT will be a net taker from OSM, I hope they contribute as much as they benefit, as otherwise it would sound like they're giving up on prop-mappi

It sounds like TT will be a net taker from OSM, I hope they contribute as much as they benefit, as otherwise it would sound like they're giving up on prop-mapping by cutting costs. It's a press release I suppose, but saying the world lacks an open platform, and processing to use such open platform, sounds a bit weird

lukeqsee 4y ago
Every company starts as a "net taker" until they find their contribution niche, so I'm not concerned. Besides, the positive effect of more eyes seeing OSM and more companies caring about its quality cannot be understated. (I can point to dozens of examples of this.)
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > more eyes seeing OSM and more companies caring about its quality cannot be understated. (I can point to dozens of examples of this.) I'd love to hear more about that
  - Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6k78gxozZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6k78gxozZw - my keynote from this year's OpenStreetMap conference basically talks about exactly that.
  - lukeqsee 4y ago
    I doubt what I saw will really add to what Doctor_Fegg says in his talk. However, a few examples: https://daylightmap.org https://daylightmap.org is built by Meta (Facebook) to allow their maps to meet their quality needs consistently while still pulling and encouraging OSM updates. This unlocks OSM data for a large amount of sensitive corporations. I personally have made quite a few edits on behalf of customers who pointed out errors in the map. The popularity of OSM-based navigation apps has made it useful for people to download editing apps to ensure their locale is as up-to-date as possible (this is getting better and better every year).
    - solarkraft 4y ago
      > Some of these contributions may have intentional and unintentional edits that are incompatible with our use cases. Our mapping teams work to scrub these contributions for consistency and quality. In the course of this work, we also build additional tools and technologies on top of OSM to increase mapping speed, and more importantly, drive a higher level of detail, quality and accuracy on the map. So it's like OSM "stable"?
      - lukeqsee 4y ago
        That's not a bad one-word description. :)
kryptiskt 4y ago
That's the nice thing about shared resources, everyone can be a net taker, because all of them get everything and nobody contributes more than small fraction.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Why so negative? OSM is now business critical to a lot of companies. These companies are of course being selfish. But the side effect of this is a lot of investment in the data and community itself. Tom Tom have got their work cut out, this space is super competitive. Just passively taking the data is not a way to compete in this space. You need to step up to stand out. Tom Tom is doing this out of necessity. They've been active in this space for a long time but they are now getting a lot of competition from other companies; many of whom are pooling resources via open data efforts, like open street maps. That gives these companies a cost advantage because maintaining maps is an expensive business and the base map is now a free commodity.

lukeqsee 4y ago

Every company starts as a "net taker" until they find their contribution niche, so I'm not concerned. Besides, the positive effect of more eyes seeing OSM and more companies caring about its quality cannot be understated. (I can point to dozens of examples of this.)

petesergeant 4y ago
> more eyes seeing OSM and more companies caring about its quality cannot be understated. (I can point to dozens of examples of this.) I'd love to hear more about that
- Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6k78gxozZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6k78gxozZw - my keynote from this year's OpenStreetMap conference basically talks about exactly that.
- lukeqsee 4y ago
  I doubt what I saw will really add to what Doctor_Fegg says in his talk. However, a few examples: https://daylightmap.org https://daylightmap.org is built by Meta (Facebook) to allow their maps to meet their quality needs consistently while still pulling and encouraging OSM updates. This unlocks OSM data for a large amount of sensitive corporations. I personally have made quite a few edits on behalf of customers who pointed out errors in the map. The popularity of OSM-based navigation apps has made it useful for people to download editing apps to ensure their locale is as up-to-date as possible (this is getting better and better every year).
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    > Some of these contributions may have intentional and unintentional edits that are incompatible with our use cases. Our mapping teams work to scrub these contributions for consistency and quality. In the course of this work, we also build additional tools and technologies on top of OSM to increase mapping speed, and more importantly, drive a higher level of detail, quality and accuracy on the map. So it's like OSM "stable"?
    - lukeqsee 4y ago
      That's not a bad one-word description. :)

kryptiskt 4y ago

That's the nice thing about shared resources, everyone can be a net taker, because all of them get everything and nobody contributes more than small fraction.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Why so negative? OSM is now business critical to a lot of companies. These companies are of course being selfish. But the side effect of this is a lot of investment in the data and community itself. Tom Tom have got their work cut out, this space is super competitive. Just passively taking the data is not a way to compete in this space. You need to step up to stand out. Tom Tom is doing this out of necessity. They've been active in this space for a long time but they are now getting a lot of competition from other companies; many of whom are pooling resources via open data efforts, like open street maps. That gives these companies a cost advantage because maintaining maps is an expensive business and the base map is now a free commodity.