This viewpoint seems to be based on the assumption that proprietary datasets are going to be more up to date than a crowdsourced dataset. Having worked with pro

This viewpoint seems to be based on the assumption that proprietary datasets are going to be more up to date than a crowdsourced dataset. Having worked with proprietary datasets, often this assumption is wrong as these datasets (which could be eligible for importation) are often surprisingly poor quality and out of date. If a company can still make money selling their datasets to their same customers, there is no incentive for them to spend resources to keep it up to date. What this viewpoint does hint at is it's comparison to Wikipedia, and the differences in geospatial data of a current map of the world. Pekk is correct, an area in OSM needs to be continually updated and refreshed, and this requires appropriate tools and a user base. Both of these exist or are being improved upon with OSM. For example, work has happened re: Monitoring of changes, comparisons with imagery, map bug reports, automated feeds, academic and industry reports and evaluations of the quality with proprietary and national mapping agency datasets.