[HN Gopher] OpenStreetMap charts a controversial new direction
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OpenStreetMap charts a controversial new direction
Author : maxerickson
Score : 134 points
Date : 2021-02-19 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| paganel wrote:
| I thought they were talking about wikimapia.org, still upset that
| Google hasn't offered them a free API key or something like that,
| that project is awesome. Among other things it was one of the
| best ways to follow the Syrian Civil War, at the beginning, at
| least.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I skimmed through subtitles and things for a better title and
| there wasn't really anything.
| paganel wrote:
| No worries, it's just that your title reminded me of that
| website which I used to visit a lot more often in the past.
| fireattack wrote:
| The wikimapia.org isn't bigger is really a shame. That site is
| like a treasure.
|
| To be fair, how interesting it can be totally depends on the
| community of your city. The place I used to live seem to have
| one or two people that are very passionate, almost _all_ the
| buildings are marked and often have interesting tidbits and
| trivia attached to them. I used to spend hours reading it. The
| city I currently live, on the contrary, is relatively dry in
| that regard. Still useful, but not something I can binge-read
| on.
|
| On the technical side though, I feel like they're always
| lacking even before the whole GMaps API thing. It has so many
| bugs (and site is slow), to a point that viewing or editing
| become annoying from time to time.
| beej71 wrote:
| Personal take of a longtime OSM contributor: I don't think it's
| an issue and welcome any improvements from any directions. I also
| don't care if megacorps use the data to make jillions of dollars
| and never contribute. But I know others feel differently.
|
| If someone manages to take over OSM and put a restrictive license
| on the data, we'll just fork from the last open version and keep
| on doing what we do best: we map!
| kylegill wrote:
| I feel like your take is a beautiful encapsulation of the open
| source mindset, taking on passion projects because it's fun and
| meaningful to build!
| coldpie wrote:
| I work in, love, and use almost exclusively open source
| software and I don't agree with your description. We wouldn't
| be anywhere if it was only passion projects. For me, I like
| open source because it avoids wasted effort: everyone works
| to push the state of the world forward, instead of hoarding
| their own work for their own profits. It's simply the best
| way to make software. But that doesn't require doing things
| only because it's fun and meaningful. Doing work on open
| source software because you can get paid to do it is a
| perfectly valid reason to work on open source software.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I don't think he's saying that his take should exclusively
| be the reason to work os OSS, but rather he thinks that the
| freedom to use OSS should be the same for everyone.
|
| You both state the major reasons why people do it.
| kylegill wrote:
| That's a fair point. Perhaps my statement paints too broad
| a brush. I get paid to work on open source software, so I
| agree it's not only worth doing because it's fun and
| meaningful.
|
| I guess I feel lucky hitting the sweet spot of enjoying the
| work I get to do on open source and be paid for it at the
| same time.
| Rounin wrote:
| As far as licences go, though, the terms and conditions
| regulating usage of OpenStreetMap now fill not three documents,
| but three SECTIONS on the OpenStreetMap Foundation's wiki.
| However liberal these licences may be, for the money it would
| cost me to hire a lawyer to read through them, I could just buy
| access to a commercial service.
| fractionalhare wrote:
| The lawyer is almost certainly going to be significantly
| cheaper than the cost of the commercial service on an ongoing
| basis.
| draw_down wrote:
| Sorry to hear it, but it seems that plenty of other
| applications felt the lawyers were worth it. I'm curious what
| exactly you believe the risk to be, except I don't think this
| comment is really made in good faith
| goatcode wrote:
| Bless you for being robust. This is the spirit that will save
| humanity from regulatory spider webs, and produce some
| fantastic things long into the future.
| bregma wrote:
| Regulatory spider webs? More like predatory capitalists!
| goatcode wrote:
| Indirectly, sure. Predatory capitalists love regulations,
| when they get big enough.
| RGamma wrote:
| "Such devaluation could lead to what he called "digital
| gentrification," in which the very attributes of OSM that drew
| its earlier users are degraded by its newfound fame."
|
| A look at much of the internet and the declining role of academic
| guiding principles wrt technology and its governance tells you
| where this might be headed..
|
| Hope OSM somehow can find a golden middle way that incorporates
| "grassroots"/cute data like benches as well as large-scale and
| tedious to maintain data such as roads or road signs. Don't let
| 'em eat you.
| blendergeek wrote:
| I am a very active OSM contributor.
|
| I am very pleased that corporations are helping us with the map.
| It can sometimes be annoying when somebody who isn't from the
| area messes some complicated intersection based on old satellite
| imagery. It is awesome when a corporation adds large numbers of
| features that I never would have added. More contributions is a
| net positive.
|
| The only concern I have is that corporations may seek to prevent
| OSMF from offering competing map services. Mapbox might, for
| example, seek to hamstring the openstreetmap.org tile server in
| order to push people to their commercial offering. This is
| largely theoretical but is a large concern of mine. As long as
| core technologies are Free/Open Source, we can always pack up and
| fork if it becomes problematic.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The status quo is (roughly) to resist adding capacity to the
| osm.org servers anyway. Not so much to push people to
| commercial offerings, more to avoid growing the resources
| required to operate the foundation and site.
| no_wizard wrote:
| 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.
| alex_duf wrote:
| 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.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| It is like open source debate. Contributing back could either
| mean hiring/giving massive sponsorships to the core
| contributors, or it could mean giving out scraps. A couple
| meaningless lines of code here and there and the corporate
| sponsor gets to pretend they have fulfilled their social
| responsibility. The bulk of the labour is still born by those
| who toiled for years without material reward.
| notatoad wrote:
| the complaint seems to be less about anything practical, and
| more about how you used to get a warm fuzzy feeling from
| contributing your data to a scrappy upstart, and now that OSM
| has achieved such success and is being used by so many
| companies, the warm fuzzy feeling has gone away.
|
| not sure that's really a problem that needs solving.
| anticristi wrote:
| Remember when Ubuntu started commercialising Debian?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Can bad mappers be banned? Or is the net value positive
| even if theyale some errors?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| If you ban the account of one employee of a contractor,
| that employee can just make a new account, or the
| contractor company can give that employee another account
| to edit from.
| ledauphin wrote:
| but this is trivially true of all contributing accounts
| to OSM, right?
| mpol wrote:
| But this time someone's salary depends on it, it is not
| just fly-by vanadlism for fun. They will be more
| persistent in staying active as mapper.
| jfoster wrote:
| Rather than continually getting their accounts banned,
| wouldn't it be easier for them to eventually start
| responding to the OSM etiquette?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| It is presumed that sometimes they don't respond to
| changeset comments because they aren't proficient in
| English (or the local language of whatever country they
| are mapping remotely).
| yorwba wrote:
| Hobbyists who keep getting their changes reverted and
| their account banned will eventually give up, especially
| if they're not actively trying to harm the project.
|
| But a contractor who's paid for their work, even if it's
| not very good? They'll just keep going so they don't lose
| their job.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| grawprog wrote:
| >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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > When it launched in the mid-2000s, most spatial information was
| owned by governments, and was difficult or impossible to access.
|
| It bothers me that this sentence is used as if the facts behind
| it are a logical arrangement of consequences. The fact that
| people are prevented from accessing data that they funded, and by
| all rights own, is an absurdity.
|
| I appreciate that OSM exists, but in a perfect world, it
| shouldn't have to.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| "Difficult to access" here may have meant going to your
| national/state mapping bureau (or however it's called) and
| physically buying a printed copy of the maps. It's not
| necessarily that they "prevented people from accessing data
| that they funded", or at least it was not around here, just
| that getting maps required physical movement which I guess
| these days qualifies as "difficult to access".
|
| I (and several others) used to trace these maps (by hand, using
| OziExplorer) then offer them for download in Garmin/MapDekode
| format. OSM didn't even exist at the point.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The data to generate the maps is likely digital, and not
| being able to obtain a digital copy of the data would qualify
| as inaccessible.
| reaperducer wrote:
| It was possible to obtain a digital copy, but you needed
| special equipment.
|
| Most government data was only available on 9-track tapes.
| So few media outlets had the necessary equipment that
| reporters' groups would publish step-by-step information
| about how to get it done, and with what hardware.
|
| On the consumer level? Forget about it.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Cartography predates computers, many maps were kept as the
| majority of technical documents are kept: in a physical
| archive.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Yes, but digital maps are old enough that my elementary
| school had a networked GIS package to show us maps in the
| computer lab in the early 90s, and it's much older than
| that.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| In the Netherlands we have access to, and are permitted to use
| and derive from, government map sources such as the cadastral
| maps and the various municipal data layers (trees, benches,
| natural features such as waterways, streets).
|
| This is great, and we can go the extra mile on OpenStreetMap
| because of it, but these sources are not a replacement for
| OpenStreetMap; the goals are different and the data presented
| on it is different. On OSM points-of-interest are important.
| Things like shops, attractions, schools, museums, etc.
| Government maps don't have these. Municipal maps may have
| streets drawn in as areas accurate to the centimetre, but that
| is not the same as the graph of routable ways that OSM has (not
| just for cars, but for bicycles and pedestrians as well).
|
| OpenStreetMap mappers can make great use of government sources
| where permitted, but a good digital map is much more.
| emj wrote:
| The AND data was imported into OSM in 2007, it's safe to say
| the Netherlands has always had alot of available data.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Some of that government data existed in the form of physical
| maps, and the data was difficult to access because it had never
| been digitized, even government-internally. No one was
| prevented from digitizing it themselves, and in fact a lot of
| early OSM data came from enthusiasts digitizing old US Army
| maps because, indeed, they were public domain.
|
| Then you have cases like the Ordnance Survey in the UK where
| apparently a lot of the data is neither freely available to the
| general public, nor paid for by the general public.
| alwayshumans wrote:
| The OS are making a lot more data freely available as part of
| the Geospatial commission push to make geospatial data more
| widely available to drive innovation. I wouldn't be surprised
| if this is all a slow response to external activities like
| OSM and Google
| malandrew wrote:
| > a lot of early OSM data came from enthusiasts digitizing
| old US Army maps because, indeed, they were public domain
|
| But that's the rub, we the taxpayers have paid for all the
| map creation, even the new high resolution ones with far
| greater accuracy, yet we're stuck with these older, lower
| resolution and likely out-of-date maps. Even the new maps
| should be public domain.
| paxswill wrote:
| If you're referring to maps produced by the US government,
| they _are_ in the public domain. Early on it sounds like
| there wasn 't an easy way to transfer "raw" map data around
| (hence the tracing), but it's pretty easy now to access
| official maps in full resolution:
|
| * US Geological Survey: https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-
| systems/ngp/tnm-delivery
|
| * National Park Service:
| https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services
|
| * US Forest Service: https://www.fs.usda.gov/visit/maps
| (the API access is further down that page).
|
| Those linked above typically available through a standard
| API (Tile Map Service), as well as ESRI's moderately well
| documented REST API for accessing shapefiles and features.
| My one complaint about this data is how the USFS manages
| their data. In that case it seems each service region
| defines how data should be made available, so you have a
| pile of different methods for accessing things like
| road/trail features, or points of interest (in many cases,
| it comes down to "fetch this pile of ZIP files").
| mc32 wrote:
| ?? Some countries don't have the resources for high
| precision maps. They have old maps from whenever they were
| commissioned.
| fsflover wrote:
| > The fact that people are prevented from accessing data that
| they funded, and by all rights own, is an absurdity.
|
| Is this also true for software? https://publiccode.eu
| morganherlocker wrote:
| Conflation is a huge accessibility concern and it's not
| possible to mandate cross-government without some unified
| international government body. Even within the US, spatial data
| conflation is a major technical and political problem at the
| federal level, since the data is mostly collected at the state
| and municipal level, then rolled up into a Frankenstein
| dataset. The truly global nature of OSM is unique and the
| geographic diversity of coverage is unrivaled even among
| commercial sources, much less governmental.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| I agree with your point, although I wouldn't go so far as to
| say OSM shouldn't have to exist. There is still a lot of value
| in a global, collaborative mapping project that can be updated
| by anyone, on the ground, within seconds of a change. Official
| government maps can take much longer to show new buildings,
| road changes, etc.
| samaparicio wrote:
| Of companies mentioned in the article, the asymmetric
| contributions to OSM that bother me the most are AllTrails and
| Strava - 2 companies that heavily rely on trail data sourced from
| OSM.
|
| AllTrails does close to zilch to help put trails into the maps,
| even though the majority of trails are user-generated content.
|
| Strava has let "Slide", their one project that could help put
| trails on the map, die an ungracious death.
|
| If you build a whole business model on top of free data, it may
| be worth considering improving that data.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Strava worked with Mapbox when they were switching over. I
| don't know what exactly the deal was, but Mapbox employees
| added a bunch of missing stuff to OSM based on Strava data
| analysis.
|
| https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/114
| ledauphin wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong...
|
| but I do find this whole discussion strange, because it's
| rather obviously the same problem that open-source _anything_
| has: you're giving something away for free, and it's very hard
| if not impossible to control how that data gets used or whether
| the primary benefactors contribute back anything to the source.
|
| Ironically, the only known model of forcing people/corporations
| to contribute something back based on their usage of something
| is called "market-based pricing".
|
| Unless someone is proposing that maps are somehow ethically or
| systematically different, than, say, Linux, this conversation
| feels rather unspecific and pointless.
| [deleted]
| hmsimha wrote:
| There's a similar problem with websites which map rock climbing
| routes. Some make their data open to some extent, but not in a
| way that can be meaningfully contributed back to OSM. Even
| though they _all_ use OSM data (usually via Mapbox), to
| generate their maps, and allow users to draw and annotate
| layers on top of it.
|
| I'm very interested in working towards an open tooling and open
| data ecosystem for rock climbing information, but I don't know
| where to get started on finding others to build it with.
| maxerickson wrote:
| You are welcome to make a channel on
| https://slack.openstreetmap.us/ .
|
| There may be one already, I haven't checked.
| notatoad wrote:
| Does strava actually use the trail data from OSM? as far as i
| can tell, the routes on strava are entirely contributed by
| strava users and don't come from OSM in any way.
|
| The two maps follow the same paths obviously, but at least in
| my region the routes and segments on strava don't ever seem to
| start or stop at the trail intersections in the OSM maps and
| often cross unmapped and unofficial connectors that don't
| appear on OSM. The extent of their reliance on OSM trail data
| seems to be that they use MapBox tile images and those tiles
| sometimes have OSM trail names marked on them.
| mtmail wrote:
| Strava's map are based on OpenStreetMap, there is attribution
| in the bottom right corner of every map (not sure where in
| the mobile app, I'm not an active user).
|
| The parent comment probably talks about giving Strava user
| uploaded data/tracks back to the OSM community so they
| improve the map (or add new paths themselves). In a way they
| already do https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava#Data_Pe
| rmission_-... Allowing tracing is more than other companies
| offer and gladly accepted. It regularly leads to new unmapped
| paths discovered, sometimes on private ground (military
| areas) that are otherwise inaccessable to an OSM mapper.
| notatoad wrote:
| >Strava's map are based on OpenStreetMap
|
| yeah, that's what i was saying about the tiles - their
| tiles come from mapbox, which means they include OSM data
| and therefore must include the attribution. but the claim
| was that they're heavily reliant on OSM's _trail data_ ,
| and I just haven't seen any evidence of that.
| grapecookie wrote:
| osm has great maps, many of the alleyways in my hood are present,
| great for charting out meandering walks.
| polote wrote:
| "Tensions grow" is addresses at the very end of the article
|
| > While Sarkar agrees that a diversity of perspectives can be a
| strength, he also warns that the private sector could overshadow
| the work of the hobbyists and humanitarians who have made OSM
| what it is to date. Volunteer editors could lose interest in
| participating if they feel their work is devalued, which could in
| turn diminish the map's quality and coverage, he said. Such
| devaluation could lead to what he called "digital
| gentrification," in which the very attributes of OSM that drew
| its earlier users are degraded by its newfound fame.
|
| Hum, ok so you are having rich people problems
| dang wrote:
| This comment breaks quite a few of the HN guidelines. These,
| for example:
|
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| " _Eschew flamebait. Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless
| you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated
| controversies and generic tangents._"
|
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| Would you mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking
| to the rules when posting to HN? We'd appreciate it.
| kgin wrote:
| Am I reading this correctly that some volunteers are upset that
| their edits represent a smaller proportion of total edits because
| big companies are adding lots of data? But in absolute numbers
| the volunteer edits are still the same?
|
| If that's the case, is that essentially asking for a map with
| less data so their own contribution can be a bigger fraction of
| the total data?
| asperous wrote:
| Trying to piece together what the actual concerns are:
|
| * Mapping is not purely factual, some things can be mapped in
| different ways and corporations might map things that conflict
| with how normal people see them. Maybe an example would be
| deleting a commonly used path through cooperate headquarters that
| was made for staff/visitors.
|
| * Too much data in niche areas like driveways overwork volunteers
| and steers attention away from citizen areas of work
|
| * Governance model, fears corporations will get too much control
| through sponsorships
|
| I see these as valid issues but I think they can be worked
| through. For me it has been extremely nice to have a free and
| open data source for projects and the OSM data model is really
| easy to use I think. I feel the benefits outweigh the problems
| but I am only a user looking from the outside.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| As a long-time OSM contributor, 1 is the only one that bothers
| me.
|
| We've had a bit of an issue in the UK with Amazon Logistics
| mappers blatting away some of the nuance in rights-of-way
| mapping (which is quite a complex subject in UK law) as they
| map driveways for their own use.
|
| That's not a massive problem in itself - OSM has reasonably
| good communication mechanisms (particularly changeset
| comments), and there's a clear Organised Edit Policy which most
| of the big guys follow. It's just a challenge because of scale:
| it's hard for part-time, unpaid volunteers to spend hours
| chasing after the countless Amazon contractors who are sitting
| editing OSM all day. I know we've lost a few individual
| contributors because of this, though more in the US than in
| Europe.
|
| But this is mostly growing pains. With goodwill from all sides
| I don't see any reason it won't be resolved.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > Maybe an example would be deleting a commonly used path
| through cooperate headquarters that was made for
| staff/visitors.
|
| I cannot believe that this example represents a meaningful
| source of conflict.
| airstrike wrote:
| For an article on maps, that image of who mapped what is terribly
| hard to read
| renewiltord wrote:
| I work in geospatial stuff and we use OSM data. There's things
| I'd contribute back but the community is notoriously prickly. You
| make a couple of mistakes not made out of malice and they'll
| assume you're corpos out to fuck everyone because that's what
| evil corpos do.
|
| The downside is high (you get a bad reputation as being an evil
| corpo) and the upside is limited. So, for the moment, we just
| hold the corrections on our side and overlay them on top.
|
| If you're an actual corp you don't care about that, but being
| labeled an evil corpo will ruin things if you want to cooperate.
| And we're a small startup.
|
| I'll revisit it some time but we're being cautious about it.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Edit: It's a shame you can't find a way to make those edits
| available to OSM.
| maxerickson wrote:
| This isn't welcome behavior (I think there's not significant
| technical limitation on it though).
|
| The things lots of people in the OSM community want to see
| are willingness to cooperate and willingness to communicate.
| Making throwaway accounts obviously doesn't accomplish those
| things.
|
| (there's value into letting people quietly make
| contributions; reducing community hassles associated with
| systematic changes isn't really where that value lies)
| tux1968 wrote:
| Well it was an honest question, not a suggestion. I suppose
| there are good reasons for that policy, just seems a shame
| to lose out on good honest updates because people are
| afraid to post without anonymity.
| maxerickson wrote:
| One pretty low risk way to share back is to just publish the
| issues somehow.
|
| I guess you could still get criticized for not fixing them
| yourselves though.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/DSCa4
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| I've read the whole article and I don't get what its trying to
| say. Corpos are not contributing enough? They are contributing
| too much and thats changing the culture?
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| I had the same impression. Amazon moved into our area and
| someone from their logistics has been contributing a lot to OSM
| mostly documenting service roads. They have the resources to
| really add to level of detail of OSM. I see it as a net
| positive.
| phkahler wrote:
| I thought that was the point, everyone improves the part they
| care most about and in the end we have something very
| comprehensive. You even get people who care a lot about
| filling gaps just for the sake of completeness. So long as
| nobody corrupts the big picture it should be fine.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's a fairly large number of long time contributors to
| OpenStreetMap that only want driveways if they are added with
| deep passion (I'm like 2/3 serious).
|
| There is a real issue where it doesn't make sense for a small
| volunteer organization to manage a massive amount of data that
| is not of interest to a broader set of users. It's not a huge
| issue, because the narrow interests mostly understand the basic
| issue, there's just not universal agreement about what is
| broadly useful or not.
| ris wrote:
| This article could have been written at any point in the last 5
| years really, no matter how much the headline tries to make it
| sound like news.
| soheil wrote:
| Can open source wiki/user contributed style tools implement a
| type of captcha to protect against big corps' influence? I see
| major entities regularly fiddling with wikipedia articles to
| insert bias. Why not turn Google's Recaptcha back on itself?
| mtmail wrote:
| The article isn't about Wikipedia articles but about
| OpenStreetMap. Unlike articles it's much harder to add bias to
| data points, e.g. a street or position of a house, that can be
| verified.
| soheil wrote:
| I thought this article was about control over OSM, not sure
| why it's so difficult to make parallels between this and
| wikipedia. Selectively adding accurate data points can very
| much bias a map, e.g. all you see is McDonalds and never a
| local restaurant
| zaik wrote:
| If McDonalds were to add all its restaurants to OSM what
| would be the downside? They are not removing other
| restaurants from the map. I fail to see how adding accurate
| data points would hurt OSM even if it is done
| "selectively".
| soheil wrote:
| Cherrypicking causes biases [0]. A highly non-random
| distribution of data points is the issue here. No one has
| to remove other restaurants, it's just that there could
| be 10x more effort put in to add detailed McDonald data
| points.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking#In_science
| maxerickson wrote:
| OSM has lots of other sources of bias, so it isn't really
| an additional problem.
|
| For instance, someone has enthusiastically mapped Coke
| County, Texas:
|
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=7/32.083/-98.465
|
| I haven't looked into it, but chances are it is just a
| result of them living there, and it creates a huge bias
| in the data in Texas.
| yborg wrote:
| I don't see how that follows at all, it's very easy to make
| things disappear (a CEO's 3rd vacation home perhaps) and
| getting ground truth on a whole planet is a hard problem.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This article makes zero sense to me.
|
| It's arguing that corporations are contributing data to OSM, but
| that this somehow... changes the proportion of what kinds of
| things OSM covers? That traditional users have added "hyperlocal
| features, such as a neighborhood bench or informal walking path"
| while coporations are adding "roads, buildings, and all other
| points of interest" and "a particular emphasis on improving road
| data".
|
| How is this _anything_ but good? As long as data is correct, the
| more data the better -- _proportions_ are meaningless. Buildings
| and roads aren 't _taking away_ from benches and paths. And I 'm
| pretty sure buildings and roads are benefiting all users
| _anyways_ , no matter _who_ contributes them.
|
| I'm utterly baffled by what logic the author imagines this is a
| bad thing. The data is open, so it's not like corporations are
| winding up with exclusive ownership of anything.
|
| So what's the problem...?
| ris wrote:
| One of the typical ways this manifests itself in reality is a
| dedicated local mapper adding or correcting a detail where they
| know that some common data sources are either wrong or out of
| date. At some point later a corporate mapper the other side of
| the planet working from imagery will come along and change it
| back to agree with the imagery they have, despite it being 4
| years old. Local mappers get exhausted from the effort it takes
| to keep their patch from being broken and disenfranchised with
| their edits being drowned out by the noise of the corporate
| machine.
|
| A devils advocate answer of course, I'm personally on the fence
| on the issue.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think the concern is big companies might get into governing
| positions and make decisions about the projects future... For
| example, they could decide to divert some efforts into a
| commercially licensed 'extended' dataset, or they could sign
| restrictive deals to get hold of 3d laser scan or
| satellite/aerial imagery that isn't so easy for volunteers to
| collect.
| virgilp wrote:
| That would be a legitimate concern but the article focuses so
| much on stuff like "look how much edits Apple made!!" that
| it's really hard to tell if it was a concern for the author,
| at all; or if there are others (e.g. it spends about as much
| time talking about the governance concern as it talks about
| diversity in the governance body; so it's unclear if author
| is worried that companies might take over, or is just
| unpleased with the governance in general).
|
| Same as the parent poster, I'm baffled. This article makes no
| sense to me. If it had a point to made, it buried it in
| thousands of words of blabbering.
| damnafrica wrote:
| If we look very well at it we see Apple made the most
| contributions to map Africa. Who's going to complain about
| that? Google, maybe? I guess african roads don't suit the
| google maps cars.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's also a curious business decision... Apple doesn't
| make much revenue in Africa, nor have many users there.
| Why direct all their mapping efforts there?
| joosters wrote:
| No-one said that Apple directs all (or even most, or even
| just a significant proportion) of _their_ mapping efforts
| there. Should they ignore a continent?
| pydry wrote:
| It makes sense to commoditize their complement.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Yeah and I guess American roads don't suit the google
| maps cars either.
|
| I mean just look at them:
| https://i1.wp.com/thirdeyemom.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/08...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thanks. I guess I just ask, is there any basis for that fear
| though?
|
| The OpenStreetMap Foundation's governance [1] isn't tied to
| who contributes data. Is there any evidence they are being
| "corrupted" in any way at all by corporations adding data?
|
| And like _any_ open project, if its governance _were_
| captured by "bad guys", users can always fork it and "vote
| with their feet" since the data's open.
|
| If OSM really was being subject to a hostile board takeover
| by corporations then obviously that would be hugely
| newsworthy and concerning. But it's like the article is
| trying to stoke fears of this while presenting zero actual
| facts to support it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap_Foundation#Go
| ver...
| closeparen wrote:
| Is there really precedent for companies taking over open-
| source upstreams and turning them proprietary? I expect the
| corporate users appreciate the price & freedom at least as
| much as everyone else.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| MySQL springs to mind
| closeparen wrote:
| Oracle took over MySQL as the acquirer of Sun, not as a
| heavy MySQL user with too much influence.
| mpol wrote:
| Not sure what "open-source upstream" means, but in
| software, there is the complaint that companies like Google
| can add a lot of complexity to software projects, which
| serves Google, but not the classic home user of Linux. That
| can make it effectively their own corporate project and
| drown out more casual developers.
| closeparen wrote:
| That much is true - direction and feature set. The
| accusation that seems weird is that companies would be
| motivated to make it proprietary just because they use
| it. At most, it seems like you'd get a niche for
| "enterprise" distributions with support contracts on the
| same stuff.
| mpol wrote:
| For me this discussion is new, so I don't have good answers to
| these questions.
|
| One thing that happened when Pokemon Go got popular is that
| people (users) were conducting vandalism, in the sense that
| many pokemon figures were added to the main map of OSM. People
| have to work really hard to remove these, and they might burn
| out on this. There is already a lot of vandalism, like people
| adding their friends drinking shed, or whatever they think of
| as funny.
|
| Another thing that already happens with volunteers, is people
| thinking their working area is "their area", while no such
| concept exists. This can already give a lot of friction among
| volunteers. I can imagine if billions in money are at stake,
| big companies with a massive crowd of emplyees might want to
| really grab those working areas and drown out volunteers. If
| that gets a big problem, volunteers that were active for years
| might drop out.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Is this really such a problem? I guess this is my first time
| hearing of it, but I believe OSM allows you to mark areas
| where public wifi (or private wifi, in the case of businesses
| that provide wifi to customers), is available. Wifi _access_
| is not a tangible, physical thing (even though of course the
| physical layer is), but OSM provides a framework to map it
| because it 's tied to a location, and the information might
| be useful to some people.
| mpol wrote:
| I am not sure what you are replying to, so I assume there
| is some miscommunication.
|
| I don't know anything about mapping public Wifi access,
| like in shopping centres.
|
| What I meant is that already some people feel like their
| city and a 30km radius around it is "their area" and they
| want to control what and how things get mapped there. It
| can lead to heated and emotional discussions, we are people
| after all :) If a big company with lots of human resources
| would do this, there is hardly any fighting back.
| mpol wrote:
| Oh, one other thing. Many volunteers are maintaining and
| guarding hiking routes and cycling routes. These get damaged
| easily (I just did that yesterday myself) and these
| volunteers sometimes carry a big burden. The big companies
| don't have an interest in these routes "by the people, for
| the people", there is no money in that. If they get more
| often damaged, it will not be regarded as funny by these
| important long-lasting volunteers.
| abcanthur wrote:
| Is this virtual or real damage? As in, the trail route is
| imperfect and misleading about the actual trail, or the
| trail is revealed via the map and others come and physical
| use damages the trail. The second reminds me of land owners
| sneakily putting "no trespassing" on land that is legally
| publicly accessible (I think this happened in Sausalito
| about a year ago)
| mpol wrote:
| There might be many situations, but I was mostly talking
| about virtual vandalism. When you edit points, lines or
| routes in the wrong way, they get damaged. The volunteers
| guarding these need to fix them themselves, which can be
| a burden and they can get emotional already. You can
| imagine how that goes when more damage gets done where
| the fixing is left for those volunteers.
|
| I don't know much about land-owners doing vandalism,
| often people try to communicate, sometimes this works out
| okay.
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