Not exactly. Some things yes, others not. There’s almost 0 bureaucracy involved in mapping: creating an account. Compare that to reporting problems with data in GMaps. I expect this will also be the case for Overture because of the opaque (i.e. non-transparent) production process (cf. recent comments).
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OSM is for whatever you use it, not only niches, and I use it almost exclusively. I very rarely resort to the googs (less than once a month).
It’s awesome that I can search for an address, a museum, get to the linked Wikipedia page(s)/Wikicommons image(s), sheltered bus stops with light, garbage cans/dumpsters and recycling containers, etc, etc…
But it’s also awesome that I can search for a mexican-cuisine restaurant with outdoor seating, toilet, that accepts payment cards, that does not allow smoking inside, and that is open right now.
This isn’t niche, it’s useful! How far can you go with googs?
As should be clear to every OSM contributor, these things are well within OSM’s scope. That is certainly not the problem. The problem is getting enough hands to map things and keeping them up-to-date.
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Given that the OSMF has been providing a forum in one way or the other since at least 2009, and this is just a replacement for the previous iteration with 1’000s of users, not very long at all.
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What criticism? “I would not give OSMF even a task to buy me coffee” and the rest of post was IMO plain trolling, not a constructive criticism, so in all seriousness did not deserve anything other then a flippant retort (which it got).
Were it a serious attempt (in which case the Mashin really has some learning up to do on how to present an argument!), then Simon’s reply would indeed be red herring logical fallacy, just as this quote of yours is a combination of several faulty generalization fallacies (among other things, including red herring).
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It’s entirely your choice if you have a threshold on what constitutes a worthwhile comment. Personally I’m happy to read and think about them all in order to help me understand the mood music around OSM, OSMF and Overture.
I responded as I felt Mashin had been dismissed and I wanted to highlight it and note that I regularly feel the same. Please accept my apologies if that offends or upsets you in any way.
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The main point of my message was not about OSMF and that’s why I wrote it like that. But just to be clear, I am not criticizing people on OSMF. I think they do all the can. The problem is that OSMF is purposely left weak and toothless, which makes it unable to make quick decisive actions. Outsiders including companies see that and would most likely never task OSMF with anything important. I think for them we are not a serious and trusted partner.
This is my last message on OSMF in this thread, because it is off-topic.
I wrote my comment, because some people in this topic act like hurt kids. Yes companies built their own dataset. Yes they took also our data, but also that's what we wanted by making them free for everyone. Let's just move on and go mapping. We all can use this opportunity to analyze and think what companies need. Learn from it and implement it in OSM. Or don't (as always).
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Democratic desisions take time
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From the blog: Enriching Overture Maps Data with GERS
plus new data release
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[sarcasm alert]
I really agree that OSM stands no chance compared to Overture!! Look at these two pictures:
In OSM we just have the old and boring Cathedral, but in Overture we realize the existence of an entirely new level of reality!! It seems a great place to chill and have fun, even for catholic priests!!!
There’s no way to compete with that!!!
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Massive rewrite of history attempt by the Linux Foundation and Overture
For decades, the geospatial industry has quietly spent billions of dollars rebuilding the same map features — roads, buildings, addresses, and places — over and over again.
Every company.
Every government.
Every platform.
All solving the same problem… separately.
What if we stopped doing that?
That’s exactly why the Overture Maps Foundation exists.
Overture is tackling some of the most stubborn problems in geospatial:
🗺 Duplicate base map creation – Why rebuild the same roads and buildings thousands of times?
🔗 Lack of interoperability – Different schemas and formats make combining datasets painful.
🧩 Entity identity – With GERS IDs, we can finally link data to the same real-world place consistently.
🌍 Global coverage at scale – Maintaining billions of features shouldn’t fall on a single organization.
Overture is turning the global base map into shared infrastructure — allowing organizations to focus on what really matters: innovation, insight, and applications built on top of it.
The results so far speak for themselves:
📥 24.3B downloads
📦 41.6 PB of data transferred
🌐 Used in 50+ countries
And we’re just getting started.
If your organization relies on geospatial data, the question isn’t whether Overture will impact your work — it’s how you want to participate.
👉 Join the effort.
👉 Help shape the world’s open map foundation.
👉 Focus your innovation where it matters most.
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Ah, Linkedin, there’s your culprit. One of the biggest misinformation platforms of sciences, yet people still believe in it…
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I daresay more of those billions of dollars have been spent on software licences than on the data.
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