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The point of OpenStreetMap is that we provide the data and you provide (or you use services that provide) an interpretation of the data that's useful to you. T

The point of OpenStreetMap is that we provide the data and you provide (or you use services that provide) an interpretation of the data that's useful to you. The rendering style you picked is certainly different than Google's. MapQuest Open's rendering style is pretty darn close to the Google Maps link you pointed at [0], and other map providers like MapBox let you build maps with styling how you like it in just a few clicks (including picking English labels when known). I made one just now [1]. We don't do a great job of making the point when you arrive at osm.org, but we aren't competing with Google Maps. We're competing with Navteq/Nokia and other map data providers. [0] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7236&layers=Q http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7236&layers=... [1] https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/iandees.h675i5pf/page.html?secure=1#16/43.5882/39.7211 https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/iandees.h675i5pf/page.html?sec...

mratzloff 13y ago
On my iPhone, all the text and graphics are highly pixelated for the links you provide. Any idea why?
- girvo 13y ago
  On my iPad Mini Retina on iOS 7.0.4 they look perfectly fine for me, I wonder what's wrong there?
- pipeep 13y ago
  I don't why Mapbox's tiles would be pixelated (except that they might have the preview page misconfigured), but I don't think Mapquest Open supports retina tiles yet. A solution is to make the tiles half the size, but then all the labels are tiny. In addition to this, I dislike Mapquest Open's tiles because they're subject to jpeg compression. Unfortunately, it's the only free tile service out there without usage limits.
sneak 13y ago
> We don't do a great job of making the point when you arrive at osm.org, but we aren't competing with Google Maps. We're competing with Navteq/Nokia and other map data providers. If you want seven billion people using it, it's going to be quite necessary to create a consumer-facing canonical front-end. I'm sure you can get lots of volunteer hackers to contribute if you throw up an MVP on github.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  That's a bit like saying if you want Linux to be a success on servers, mobile phones, game consoles, routers etc. then you need to have a single distribution that they can all use. Instead, there's room for Valve's SteamOS, Google's Android, Google's ChromeOS, Canonical's Ubuntu and many more, both commercial and community focused, competing in some ways, collaborating in others. This announcement is one company that did exactly that, and provided a consumer-facing product built on OSM, who just got bought by a bigger producer of consumer-facing products who intend to do the same on an even bigger scale.
  - sneak 13y ago
    Not really. But Linux would not be what it is today if not for Red Hat historically and Ubuntu today. There needs to be a canonical (no pun intended) use case. libpcap has tcpdump. linux has ubuntu. http has nginx (and previously, apache). It would be great if there were a canonical frontend stack for OSM that we could all hack on to make as usable as Google Maps. It should be hosted somewhere central but also ship with easy chef or puppet configs to deploy a stack yourself easily. I'd get tons of use out of something like that, and I'd contribute to the code, too.
    - cbaleanu 13y ago
      There are already several javascript libraries that use OSM tiles out there, most popular being OpenLayers[0] which offers an comprehensive API and Cloudmade's Leaflet[1] [0] http://openlayers.org/ http://openlayers.org/ [1] http://leafletjs.com/ http://leafletjs.com/
    - parksy 13y ago
      Having used a few map services and utility libraries, I prefer that we aim towards more modular and distributed territory with geospatial technologies. Monolithic engines are great for getting 80% of what your exact requirements are, then you're stuck with a bulky system that you're probably only using 10% of, and it doesn't do the other 10% of what you need. Something like leaflet.js is nice because it gives you a simple way to present layers on a device, and it's modular meaning you can plug in extra behaviors or develop your own easily. If a similar approach were taken for the other problem areas, like route finding, traffic monitoring, etc, I'd much prefer that over a bulky platform I'd never want to use the entirety of for any one project. Of course once these modular components mature enough, no doubt soon, they will be packaged into some service that with a few simple clicks of a button generates the right combination to suit your requirement. tl;dr OSM should do the data collation and serving and be good at that. Other services should spring up to do their magic with that data. And yet other services should provide easy ways to thread it altogether for a whole world of possible use-cases. (all IMHO of course...)
dochtman 13y ago
While I get your point, I don't think it's very productive. The majority of the people who interact with OSM will get a perception of it that's biased by the presentation. Even with the MapQuest Open style, Google Maps, to me, are far more pleasant to look at and easier to understand. The text seems to be rendered in a better, more readable way, and GMaps has a better handle on decreasing contrast for things that aren't that important, allowing more important features to stand out. You can tell me that I shouldn't care, because you provide such awesome data, and I'm tempted to agree, but my reptilian brain will give me opposite feelings every time I try to look at your maps.
- untog 13y ago
  I'm not sure how you define 'productive' in this sense. OpenStreetMap provides data for people to make maps with. What you do with that data is (gloriously) up to you. OSM doesn't have to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need to make their maps look better.
  - polarix 13y ago
    'productive' parsed for me as 'beneficial to the project'; OSM doesn't have to do anything. Notably, they don't have to garner any usage or mindshare.
  - vacri 13y ago
    OSM doesn't have to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need to make their maps look better. They certainly do if "I’d like it to get OSM to seven billion contributors in the next year or two"
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      With a world population of seven billion, that seems a little ambitious...
- indrax 13y ago
  This is GNU/Linux/Ubuntu disambiguation and customer support problem. There needs to be separate organizations to package and distribute this data and make apps for it. (A web map project will have different needs than an offline phone navigation app. OSM shouldn't try to gain/maintain domain expertise in everything.)
anigbrowl 13y ago
we aren't competing with Google Maps Of course you are. That's why there is a comparison of OSM and Google Maps smack in the middle of the blog post we're all talking about. User mindshare matters as much as developer mindshare.

mratzloff 13y ago

On my iPhone, all the text and graphics are highly pixelated for the links you provide. Any idea why?

girvo 13y ago
On my iPad Mini Retina on iOS 7.0.4 they look perfectly fine for me, I wonder what's wrong there?
pipeep 13y ago
I don't why Mapbox's tiles would be pixelated (except that they might have the preview page misconfigured), but I don't think Mapquest Open supports retina tiles yet. A solution is to make the tiles half the size, but then all the labels are tiny. In addition to this, I dislike Mapquest Open's tiles because they're subject to jpeg compression. Unfortunately, it's the only free tile service out there without usage limits.

sneak 13y ago

> We don't do a great job of making the point when you arrive at osm.org, but we aren't competing with Google Maps. We're competing with Navteq/Nokia and other map data providers. If you want seven billion people using it, it's going to be quite necessary to create a consumer-facing canonical front-end. I'm sure you can get lots of volunteer hackers to contribute if you throw up an MVP on github.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
That's a bit like saying if you want Linux to be a success on servers, mobile phones, game consoles, routers etc. then you need to have a single distribution that they can all use. Instead, there's room for Valve's SteamOS, Google's Android, Google's ChromeOS, Canonical's Ubuntu and many more, both commercial and community focused, competing in some ways, collaborating in others. This announcement is one company that did exactly that, and provided a consumer-facing product built on OSM, who just got bought by a bigger producer of consumer-facing products who intend to do the same on an even bigger scale.
- sneak 13y ago
  Not really. But Linux would not be what it is today if not for Red Hat historically and Ubuntu today. There needs to be a canonical (no pun intended) use case. libpcap has tcpdump. linux has ubuntu. http has nginx (and previously, apache). It would be great if there were a canonical frontend stack for OSM that we could all hack on to make as usable as Google Maps. It should be hosted somewhere central but also ship with easy chef or puppet configs to deploy a stack yourself easily. I'd get tons of use out of something like that, and I'd contribute to the code, too.
  - cbaleanu 13y ago
    There are already several javascript libraries that use OSM tiles out there, most popular being OpenLayers[0] which offers an comprehensive API and Cloudmade's Leaflet[1] [0] http://openlayers.org/ http://openlayers.org/ [1] http://leafletjs.com/ http://leafletjs.com/
  - parksy 13y ago
    Having used a few map services and utility libraries, I prefer that we aim towards more modular and distributed territory with geospatial technologies. Monolithic engines are great for getting 80% of what your exact requirements are, then you're stuck with a bulky system that you're probably only using 10% of, and it doesn't do the other 10% of what you need. Something like leaflet.js is nice because it gives you a simple way to present layers on a device, and it's modular meaning you can plug in extra behaviors or develop your own easily. If a similar approach were taken for the other problem areas, like route finding, traffic monitoring, etc, I'd much prefer that over a bulky platform I'd never want to use the entirety of for any one project. Of course once these modular components mature enough, no doubt soon, they will be packaged into some service that with a few simple clicks of a button generates the right combination to suit your requirement. tl;dr OSM should do the data collation and serving and be good at that. Other services should spring up to do their magic with that data. And yet other services should provide easy ways to thread it altogether for a whole world of possible use-cases. (all IMHO of course...)

dochtman 13y ago

While I get your point, I don't think it's very productive. The majority of the people who interact with OSM will get a perception of it that's biased by the presentation. Even with the MapQuest Open style, Google Maps, to me, are far more pleasant to look at and easier to understand. The text seems to be rendered in a better, more readable way, and GMaps has a better handle on decreasing contrast for things that aren't that important, allowing more important features to stand out. You can tell me that I shouldn't care, because you provide such awesome data, and I'm tempted to agree, but my reptilian brain will give me opposite feelings every time I try to look at your maps.

untog 13y ago
I'm not sure how you define 'productive' in this sense. OpenStreetMap provides data for people to make maps with. What you do with that data is (gloriously) up to you. OSM doesn't have to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need to make their maps look better.
- polarix 13y ago
  'productive' parsed for me as 'beneficial to the project'; OSM doesn't have to do anything. Notably, they don't have to garner any usage or mindshare.
- vacri 13y ago
  OSM doesn't have to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need to make their maps look better. They certainly do if "I’d like it to get OSM to seven billion contributors in the next year or two"
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    With a world population of seven billion, that seems a little ambitious...
indrax 13y ago
This is GNU/Linux/Ubuntu disambiguation and customer support problem. There needs to be separate organizations to package and distribute this data and make apps for it. (A web map project will have different needs than an offline phone navigation app. OSM shouldn't try to gain/maintain domain expertise in everything.)

anigbrowl 13y ago

we aren't competing with Google Maps Of course you are. That's why there is a comparison of OSM and Google Maps smack in the middle of the blog post we're all talking about. User mindshare matters as much as developer mindshare.