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Note that the author of this piece is also directly responsible for blocking the acceptance of many new features in Carto, including community-developed and bro

Note that the author of this piece is also directly responsible for blocking the acceptance of many new features in Carto, including community-developed and broadly accepted features like highway=busway: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4226 https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4... Carto is of course just one style for OpenStreetMap, but it is also the default style shown on openstreetmap.org, with direct support from the operational team (server resources etc.). If a high-profile feature is not rendered by Carto, gaps show up all over the world where people use Carto-based screenshots, etc., and of course on openstreetmap.org. The stagnation of Carto, and thus openstreetmap.org, the website, is one of the major pain points for many mappers and developers in the OSM community, including myself. (It also highlighted the failure of the OpenStreetMap Foundation to deal with this situation, although the recent move to develop a successor vector style is somewhat hopeful). Personally, this makes me very hesitant to consider anything Christoph Hormann writes regarding OpenStreetMap in a positive light.

RicoElectrico 3y ago
Agree! Outsiders sadly wouldn't have experienced this first-hand. The thing is, PR acceptance criteria aren't even firm. If imagico after a long back-and-forth decides he doesn't like it, then too bad for the prospective contributor. A similar situation holds with openstreetmap-website. Sadly currently barely anyone uses Rails...
- Macha 3y ago
  Honestly even reading his prior blog post and this together, his own outline of his position made me feel there was more to it. Like the way I read it, they had a process of open contribution, and then they closed it down, partly at the author's suggestion, and then those contributors who felt the process was too onerous because of pushback against perceived euro-centrism of their contributions went and made their own projects.... which were more succesful for Europe and North America.
  - ozim 3y ago
    Sounds like open source working correctly. If someone doesn’t agree they can always fork the project and aim for their own direction.
    - Freak_NL 3y ago
      Absolutely possible; that's not the problem here. The deeper problem is that Carto gets a free ride on the website as the incumbent house style. You can fork it, but doesn't make it the default style shown on openstreetmap.org. You could fork it, get popular community support, and still get nowhere except for wasting a lot of effort, because displacing Carto takes a lot of political manoeuvring as well as server resources for hosting the default style (which are not insignificant). If it was a matter of just forking it, and have the openstreetmap.org website maintainer pick it up if it proved more popular than that would be that, but given the fact that the one other Carto maintainer who seems semi-active is also a member of the OpenStreetMap operations working group (i.e., server resources), spending any effort on a fork with the goal to displace Carto seems pointless at this point in time. I prefer to spend my resources on just making the map better. Some people justly pick up their crayons and go make a nice thing elsewhere (like the Americana style), or contribute to the styles used by popular apps. For now part of the community just gave up on Carto and is waiting to see how developments for the new vector style will pan out.
    - Sakos 3y ago
      And as always, forking might solve a specific issue, but creates so many new ones that it isn't such a clearcut and obvious or even sensible solution.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  I wouldn't compare osm-website and osm-carto at all. The commit logs are very different. openstreetmap-website: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/commits https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/commi... . Numerous commits most days. openstreetmap-carto: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/commits https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/commits . So far in 2024; one small regression fixed, one niche bit of tagging added to an existing style, some largely pointless code style tidying. That's it.
  - RicoElectrico 3y ago
    Sure, you're right - I haven't checked osm-carto in a while. Nonetheless, the barrier to contributing to osm-website is too high and the maintainers also not welcoming. TomH is infamous for his comments that brush off even OSMF board members. The openstreetmap-website is due for improvements, but the same thing applies - maintainers are very finicky and even worse, one of them is abrasive as hell. Elsewhere in the comments it was pointed out about hostility to experimentation, the same applies to openstreetmap-website. There are many things that could be tried on the front-end, but in the eyes of TomH you need to be perfect at the first shot, based on his understanding of the situation. Somebody pointed out that openstreetmap-website contributions pace curiously picked up after the NorthCrab's blogs detailing his unofficial and unsolicited Python rewrite, OpenStreetMap NG. Honestly even if he's somewhat cringe at times, he's still more adaptive than TomH and co. E.g. people pointed out that Mongo is fauxpen source so he duly rewrote the DB part in Postgres.
Vinnl 3y ago
If you're willing to entertain more leisurely mappers like me (i.e. those unaware of what happens in the community), care to steelman their reasons for the blockade?
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  I've read (and engaged with) everything in that issue, but I still don't understand the vague 'well the tag is just too loosely defined' argument. I mean, sure, there is some ambiguity around the exact limit of this tag, i.e., is it only meant for ways dedicated to rapid transit bus routes, or is it for ways dedicated to any bus performing a public transport role? That is a valid question (of the kind which tends to get answered in the OSM project with the passage of time and observing the actual usage of the tag), but, and at the end of the day, ways tagged with highway=busway are undeniably: a) roads; b) used by buses; c) unless otherwise indicated, not accessible to general traffic. Absolutely refusing to render even a simple line after three and a half years (despite two PRs provided) is hard to explain as anything but antagonistic gatekeeping behaviour.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    The arguments in that discussion don't really make sense either. Such lanes exist outside Latin America too. Like the "busbaan" in Almere, Netherlands. Edit: And in Diemen, as pointed out above. But generally this "process-first" attitude makes me step back as a contributor immediately. I prefer doing something the wrong way and fixing it later instead of not doing it at all. The same thing totally antagonizes me against Wikipedia editors so I never participate there either.
    - Sakos 3y ago
      These lanes also exist in Germany. Definitely agree. This type of gatekeeping is toxic and ultimately makes us all worse off.
- aendruk 3y ago
  My reading of the situation is that, in general, they want the community to reach consensus on a globally appropriate data model and visual language, ultimately for the purpose of serving all of humanity, fairly. Given the unique position of influence held by this renderer, ad hoc iteration on it without holistic planning risks inadvertently establishing harmful precedent that might take years to correct, or worse, to notice at all if only underrepresented users are impacted. For the specific case of busways, this holistic planning simply has yet to occur.
stevage 3y ago
I work full time in web mapping. IMHO the ugly OSM style and its lack of innovation held back adoption of OSM severely for years.
- RicoElectrico 3y ago
  Do you mean the early-2010s era style? Sure that one was quite ugly.
  - jwagenet 3y ago
    The current style on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ basically looks the same as I remember it in ~2010, and is quite ugly compared to Apple Maps and even new google maps.
    - nicoburns 3y ago
      Or even something like OrganicMaps which runs on OSM data
    - RicoElectrico 3y ago
      No, it does not look the same as in 2010. Your memory is failing you.
    - moltonel3x 3y ago
      That's very subjective, I find the Google style barely usable compared to OSM carto. No experience with Apple.
- TrickyFoxy 3y ago
  How did this stop you from deploying your own tile server with your own style?
  - stevage 3y ago
    First, my remark is about the impact on the adoption of OpenStreetMap in general, not my personal usage of it. And second - it did not stop me from doing that, but it was extremely difficult, and took months of effort. I built a tool to set up a server with all the components required to download the data, load it into PostGIS, style it with Tilemill and generate and serve tiles: https://github.com/stevage/saltymill https://github.com/stevage/saltymill So I find your comment quite disingenuous.
willdr 3y ago
Wow. This sort of obstructionism is what convinces people Open Source is not worth the time and effort. Really disappointing. As someone else said in that issue, "perfect is the enemy of good". Thousands of KMs of road are currently not VISIBLE on the map due to stonewalling.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  The material difference between this and someone intentionally sabotaging things is in practice, zero. It's crazy destructive
GrayShade 3y ago
Is he? > Since the matter of consensus based decision making has been put into the foreground i like to emphasize again that in contrast to many other matters in this style there is no lack of maintainer consensus on this issue. And even if there was disagreement on a concrete decision - i have stated many times now that from my side that would not stand in the way of merging a change implementing this and none of the other maintainers has indicated that this is a matter of fundamental importance for them either.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  Effectively. There are two PRs (one a stand-in minimal solution, another a fully worked out one) which solve this problem; neither has gotten merged or even seriously considered. If you dig around a little the gatekeeping patterns become obvious, and you'll also note a number of other maintainers giving up and resigning. But don't do that; it just makes for depressing reading. Besides, regardless of what he says there, there isn't even a single thin line on Carto rendered maps to indicate the presence of significant infrastructure where this tag is used. That inaction speaks clearer than his words.
xinayder 3y ago
I'm not sure if you read his recent comment (from March) where he explains the reason for blocking the PR. The reason so far is that there is no consensus on whether highway=busway should replace the additional tags one can add to indicate that a highway street is limited for buses only. > However, so far we are pretty far away from highway=busway replacing highway=\* + access=no + bus=yes as the consensus tagging for any and all bus only roads world wide. Hence my suggestion in #4226 (comment) still applies - solving #214, and in context of that think about rendering highway=busway in a way that reflects a distinct meaning (which would likely be in analogy to highway=pedestrian). A possible design approach to this is shown in https://imagico.de/blog/en/rethinking-road-access-restrictions-rendering/ So, no, it's not stagnated because the author wants it. A previous commit from one of the maintainers (jeisenbe) said the issue was closed because no consensus was obtained from the tag proposal, dated 2020: > I’m closing this for now because there is still no established way to tag these features. Once either service=busway or highway=busway (or some other tag) becomes established as the clear consensus of most mappers, we can reopen this issue. https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4226#issuecomment-722593014 https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4... Ask anyone from the community and this is quite a good reason to block the addition of new features to the map style, especially if they aren't widely used and not standard.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  I don’t really want to get into the weeds on this one again but as someone from the community I completely disagree with this characterisation. osm-carto is comatose and largely for reasons like this.

RicoElectrico 3y ago

Agree! Outsiders sadly wouldn't have experienced this first-hand. The thing is, PR acceptance criteria aren't even firm. If imagico after a long back-and-forth decides he doesn't like it, then too bad for the prospective contributor. A similar situation holds with openstreetmap-website. Sadly currently barely anyone uses Rails...

Macha 3y ago
Honestly even reading his prior blog post and this together, his own outline of his position made me feel there was more to it. Like the way I read it, they had a process of open contribution, and then they closed it down, partly at the author's suggestion, and then those contributors who felt the process was too onerous because of pushback against perceived euro-centrism of their contributions went and made their own projects.... which were more succesful for Europe and North America.
- ozim 3y ago
  Sounds like open source working correctly. If someone doesn’t agree they can always fork the project and aim for their own direction.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    Absolutely possible; that's not the problem here. The deeper problem is that Carto gets a free ride on the website as the incumbent house style. You can fork it, but doesn't make it the default style shown on openstreetmap.org. You could fork it, get popular community support, and still get nowhere except for wasting a lot of effort, because displacing Carto takes a lot of political manoeuvring as well as server resources for hosting the default style (which are not insignificant). If it was a matter of just forking it, and have the openstreetmap.org website maintainer pick it up if it proved more popular than that would be that, but given the fact that the one other Carto maintainer who seems semi-active is also a member of the OpenStreetMap operations working group (i.e., server resources), spending any effort on a fork with the goal to displace Carto seems pointless at this point in time. I prefer to spend my resources on just making the map better. Some people justly pick up their crayons and go make a nice thing elsewhere (like the Americana style), or contribute to the styles used by popular apps. For now part of the community just gave up on Carto and is waiting to see how developments for the new vector style will pan out.
  - Sakos 3y ago
    And as always, forking might solve a specific issue, but creates so many new ones that it isn't such a clearcut and obvious or even sensible solution.
Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
I wouldn't compare osm-website and osm-carto at all. The commit logs are very different. openstreetmap-website: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/commits https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/commi... . Numerous commits most days. openstreetmap-carto: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/commits https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/commits . So far in 2024; one small regression fixed, one niche bit of tagging added to an existing style, some largely pointless code style tidying. That's it.
- RicoElectrico 3y ago
  Sure, you're right - I haven't checked osm-carto in a while. Nonetheless, the barrier to contributing to osm-website is too high and the maintainers also not welcoming. TomH is infamous for his comments that brush off even OSMF board members. The openstreetmap-website is due for improvements, but the same thing applies - maintainers are very finicky and even worse, one of them is abrasive as hell. Elsewhere in the comments it was pointed out about hostility to experimentation, the same applies to openstreetmap-website. There are many things that could be tried on the front-end, but in the eyes of TomH you need to be perfect at the first shot, based on his understanding of the situation. Somebody pointed out that openstreetmap-website contributions pace curiously picked up after the NorthCrab's blogs detailing his unofficial and unsolicited Python rewrite, OpenStreetMap NG. Honestly even if he's somewhat cringe at times, he's still more adaptive than TomH and co. E.g. people pointed out that Mongo is fauxpen source so he duly rewrote the DB part in Postgres.

Vinnl 3y ago

If you're willing to entertain more leisurely mappers like me (i.e. those unaware of what happens in the community), care to steelman their reasons for the blockade?

Freak_NL 3y ago
I've read (and engaged with) everything in that issue, but I still don't understand the vague 'well the tag is just too loosely defined' argument. I mean, sure, there is some ambiguity around the exact limit of this tag, i.e., is it only meant for ways dedicated to rapid transit bus routes, or is it for ways dedicated to any bus performing a public transport role? That is a valid question (of the kind which tends to get answered in the OSM project with the passage of time and observing the actual usage of the tag), but, and at the end of the day, ways tagged with highway=busway are undeniably: a) roads; b) used by buses; c) unless otherwise indicated, not accessible to general traffic. Absolutely refusing to render even a simple line after three and a half years (despite two PRs provided) is hard to explain as anything but antagonistic gatekeeping behaviour.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  The arguments in that discussion don't really make sense either. Such lanes exist outside Latin America too. Like the "busbaan" in Almere, Netherlands. Edit: And in Diemen, as pointed out above. But generally this "process-first" attitude makes me step back as a contributor immediately. I prefer doing something the wrong way and fixing it later instead of not doing it at all. The same thing totally antagonizes me against Wikipedia editors so I never participate there either.
  - Sakos 3y ago
    These lanes also exist in Germany. Definitely agree. This type of gatekeeping is toxic and ultimately makes us all worse off.
aendruk 3y ago
My reading of the situation is that, in general, they want the community to reach consensus on a globally appropriate data model and visual language, ultimately for the purpose of serving all of humanity, fairly. Given the unique position of influence held by this renderer, ad hoc iteration on it without holistic planning risks inadvertently establishing harmful precedent that might take years to correct, or worse, to notice at all if only underrepresented users are impacted. For the specific case of busways, this holistic planning simply has yet to occur.

stevage 3y ago

I work full time in web mapping. IMHO the ugly OSM style and its lack of innovation held back adoption of OSM severely for years.

RicoElectrico 3y ago
Do you mean the early-2010s era style? Sure that one was quite ugly.
- jwagenet 3y ago
  The current style on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ basically looks the same as I remember it in ~2010, and is quite ugly compared to Apple Maps and even new google maps.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    Or even something like OrganicMaps which runs on OSM data
  - RicoElectrico 3y ago
    No, it does not look the same as in 2010. Your memory is failing you.
  - moltonel3x 3y ago
    That's very subjective, I find the Google style barely usable compared to OSM carto. No experience with Apple.
TrickyFoxy 3y ago
How did this stop you from deploying your own tile server with your own style?
- stevage 3y ago
  First, my remark is about the impact on the adoption of OpenStreetMap in general, not my personal usage of it. And second - it did not stop me from doing that, but it was extremely difficult, and took months of effort. I built a tool to set up a server with all the components required to download the data, load it into PostGIS, style it with Tilemill and generate and serve tiles: https://github.com/stevage/saltymill https://github.com/stevage/saltymill So I find your comment quite disingenuous.

willdr 3y ago

Wow. This sort of obstructionism is what convinces people Open Source is not worth the time and effort. Really disappointing. As someone else said in that issue, "perfect is the enemy of good". Thousands of KMs of road are currently not VISIBLE on the map due to stonewalling.

kristopolous 3y ago
The material difference between this and someone intentionally sabotaging things is in practice, zero. It's crazy destructive

GrayShade 3y ago

Is he? > Since the matter of consensus based decision making has been put into the foreground i like to emphasize again that in contrast to many other matters in this style there is no lack of maintainer consensus on this issue. And even if there was disagreement on a concrete decision - i have stated many times now that from my side that would not stand in the way of merging a change implementing this and none of the other maintainers has indicated that this is a matter of fundamental importance for them either.

Freak_NL 3y ago
Effectively. There are two PRs (one a stand-in minimal solution, another a fully worked out one) which solve this problem; neither has gotten merged or even seriously considered. If you dig around a little the gatekeeping patterns become obvious, and you'll also note a number of other maintainers giving up and resigning. But don't do that; it just makes for depressing reading. Besides, regardless of what he says there, there isn't even a single thin line on Carto rendered maps to indicate the presence of significant infrastructure where this tag is used. That inaction speaks clearer than his words.

xinayder 3y ago

I'm not sure if you read his recent comment (from March) where he explains the reason for blocking the PR. The reason so far is that there is no consensus on whether highway=busway should replace the additional tags one can add to indicate that a highway street is limited for buses only. > However, so far we are pretty far away from highway=busway replacing highway=\* + access=no + bus=yes as the consensus tagging for any and all bus only roads world wide. Hence my suggestion in #4226 (comment) still applies - solving #214, and in context of that think about rendering highway=busway in a way that reflects a distinct meaning (which would likely be in analogy to highway=pedestrian). A possible design approach to this is shown in https://imagico.de/blog/en/rethinking-road-access-restrictions-rendering/ So, no, it's not stagnated because the author wants it. A previous commit from one of the maintainers (jeisenbe) said the issue was closed because no consensus was obtained from the tag proposal, dated 2020: > I’m closing this for now because there is still no established way to tag these features. Once either service=busway or highway=busway (or some other tag) becomes established as the clear consensus of most mappers, we can reopen this issue. https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4226#issuecomment-722593014 https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4... Ask anyone from the community and this is quite a good reason to block the addition of new features to the map style, especially if they aren't widely used and not standard.

Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
I don’t really want to get into the weeds on this one again but as someone from the community I completely disagree with this characterisation. osm-carto is comatose and largely for reasons like this.