An Open Source Solution for Synchronizing Kartaview Images to Mapilio 
Please check out our blog post for detailed information. An Open Source Solution for Synchronizing Kartaview Images to Mapilio
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I read the linked blog post looking for information about why such a transfer might be desirable, but didn’t find much to that effect, so I hope it’s OK to ask here.
As someone who has contributed quite a bit of imagery to Mapillary, and at some point made a copy of my library of images to KartaView using a similar tool to the one announced here (and recently agreed to a similar process for Panoramax) I am curious to know what exactly would be the benefit of having multiple copies of the same images in various platforms.
I can understand the appeal of platforms that are open source vs. proprietary, or distributed/federated vs. centralized, or even that offer richer options for managing the collection of images (for example, I’ve often wished I could split/merge sequences after they’re uploaded, reposition and reorient images —including 360° panoramas— due to faulty capturing conditions. etc.), and so on.
In this sense, how does Mapilio differ from KartaView, and what might be my motivation, as an imagery contributor, to copy my images over? Are there advantages in termos of any of the aspects I mentioned above, or perhaps others that escape me?
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In this sense, how does Mapilio differ from KartaView, and what might be my motivation, as an imagery contributor, to copy my images over?
if one of them shuts down their servers forever there will still the other one.
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True, but it’s very unlikely that any of these services would just shut down without warning and without allowing participants to download their images. So copying over would make sense in the event of a formal announcement of future sunsetting, or even in response to mere signs that such a thing might happen, but I’m not sure that justifies preemptively copying the images.
As an additional point to consider, note that images that are duplicated in multiple services will show up multiple times in the street imagery overlays in editors that aggregate multiple sources, like ID. I, for one, have given up on enabling the KartaView and Mapilio imagery overlays when using with iD in the areas I normally edit, because the imagery is either duplicated with what Mapillary has, or nonexistent. And even when there is unique imagery in one service that isn’t in the other, the duplicated images add a lot of noise and make it difficult to select the appropriate captures.
Still, I would be in favor of making copies in the situation that a service is shuttig down, or towards a platform that offers advantages such as those I mentioned above. However, I don’t see indications of any of this in this situation. I’d be happy to stand corrected, though!
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Thank you for sharing your concerns. We understand the issues related to duplicate images and the challenges they pose in tools like iD. The primary reason behind developing Mapsyncer was the feedback we received regarding KartaView’s lack of maintenance, as evidenced by its outdated GitHub repositories.
Our objective with Mapsyncer is to ensure continued access to street-level imagery without creating unnecessary duplicates. We aim to synchronize and integrate the data seamlessly, minimizing redundancy while preserving valuable imagery, especially in the event of a service shutdown or when migrating to a platform with clear advantages.
We appreciate your input and are committed to refining our approach to address these concerns effectively. If you have any further suggestions or if there are specific indicators we should consider, please let us know.
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Thanks for the clarification! I will for the time being refrain from migrating my KartaView images to Mapilio, then, since almost all of them are transferred sequences that were originally from Mapillary; but I can see it being an appropriate choice for people who have contributed directly to KartaView.
In the mean time, I would take the opportunity to reinforce my suggestion, as an imagery contributor, to consider implementing richer image management functionality, as I described above. If that were possible, I would definitely switch to using Mapilio instead of Mapillary.
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