Well how would a hapless MS salesperson know that there are a dozen OSM related accounts that somehow need to be treated specially? Seems as if the disorganisation causing the blooper has its roots somewhere else, see the above discussion thread.
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Hi @mikelmaron happy to contribute to these communications with examples how valued their contribution is and how Bing imagery has supported MSF many activities through the years! Please let me know how I can contribute.
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I just saw it.
I guess those with Bing Maps accounts too.
33 days left until the āā¦End of Lifeā And although personal accounts are not the topic of this post, I wanted to ask if there has been any progress or news?
Hello,
the potential loss of bing imagery as JOSM layer at the end of the month has quite some serious implications for mapping in most countries, where no other high resolution imagery is available. Most JOSM mapping (at least in Australia) would probably come to a halt, Iām unsure about the implications for ID editor. Thereās no guarantee our workarounds will continue to work. I would like to restart the discussion/conversation about how to proceed, if thereās any progress/solutions etc.
While I very much appreciate all the effort everyone puts in behind the scenes to sort out the issues (thanks), information trickles very slowly in this forum.
Has osm-oceania considered contacting Nearmap?
As you may know historically they allowed tracing from their imagery, this stopped with the license change (they allowed re-licensing but didnāt want to support tracing on the new conditions). @MichaelCollinson if Iām not totally mistaken negotiated with them back then and would probably be the 1st person to talk to (for example to find out if the concerns they had have been proven wrong over time).
Adding @aharvey for good measure.
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From memory (a bit of a dangerous thing at my age), the original situation was that Nearmap themselves had no problems with us using their maps but either a) their downstream image provider was not or b) they had been (recently then?) bought by another company that wanted a return on ANY use of the images. My recollection is towards the latter. I might have email correspondance, if so I will reply further.
Hi Michael
Their ownership actually changed again (well again again) just back in 2022 Nearmap - Wikipedia
Now if this is good or bad is an open question.
Simon
PS: seems as if @aharvey talked to them in 2020 (before the latest owner change) to get permission for a humanitarian event, so there is potentially still some connection there.
PPS: their coverage area seems to much larger that back in 2011, so there might be other opportunities there.
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Nearmap as a company has changed a lot since the time when they did provide OSM tracing permissions.
Yes. There was a mapathon event organised by an industry association, and they arranged for Nearmap to be available for the mapping, I helped liaise with Nearmap to get the licensing in order. It being, 1) for humanitarian purposes, 2) limited in scope to just the event, 3) being organised by the industry association certainly helped.
Just to state the obvious: OpenStreetMap has changed a lot too, particularly in importance. I donāt know if the current owners and C-level would be interested in some, potentially marketable, positive vibes, but thereās no harm in asking.
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Microsoft is a Platinum Corporate Member of OSMF, which presumably gives OSMF a direct way in to talk to them. If Microsoft can continue to support the provision of Bing imagery to iD I donāt see why they canāt continue to support it to other editors as well. I would hope OSMF are on the case and urgently talking with Microsoft and the authors/maintainers of the other affected editors. @cRaIgalLAn and/or @DW2515 and/or @mikelmaron could you provide an update?
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Has the OSMF Board @osmf-board discussed this? I skimmed the 2025 Board Minutes and couldnāt find any mention. Thereās nothing on the agenda for the next board meeting
I was on the Board, so I wouldnāt be surprised if ā
eh, nothing we can doā is the best we can getā¦
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@Robert_Whittaker exactly. I have been talking to the Advisory Board representative directly on this for the entire time. However they are in a different part of the organization than the folks who make decisions on account access. And they have not had luck either getting attention from the right people in the bureaucracy. We do know exactly who to address this the request to and have been emailing them, however after an initial bit of strong responsiveness in February/March, we have not gotten a response from them since.
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Its been pointed out multiple times that we donāt know if that would be permissable.
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UPDATE
First, given that JOSM and iD have previously arranged a way to manage imagery tokens without excessive exposure, we have shared the iD enterprise token within JOSM. Hopefully now usage of Bing imagery in JOSM has stabilized.
For other editors and applications, Microsoft has a stop gap solution to extend other accounts past the June 30 deadline into the coming year. This will allow for additional time for a longer term solution.
If you are the maintainer for one of those editors and tools that use Bing, please email asap engineering@osmfoundation.org with the account identifier you are currently using and the details of your editor/tool. Weāll compile those and work with Microsoft to get accounts updated.
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Had noticed since the (forced) reinstall of JOSM 19412 over a week ago ** that on loading the Bing tiles would always give the red text alerts, morning, afternoon, evening but within a second the tiles would fill, so goodos.
** The Bing attributes.xml file has a creation date of June 17.
I take it that this is expected behavior, since JOSM starts trying to load tiles faster than Bing validates the token.
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Will this solution also work on older version JOSM? So besides the versions tested 19412, latest 19417?
The Bing API key can be set manually in JOSMās Advanced Preferences: jmapviewer.bing.api-key=*
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The new API key mechanism was introduced several years ago (as far as I remember), so even JOSM versions that are several years old should be able to automatically download and use the new Bing API key. The Bing API key is not stored within JOSM itself (anymore).
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