Ah, it’s feeding time. Popcorn, anyone?
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MS sponsored OSMF with 150K US according a weekly newsletter some months ago, like large banks… too big to allow to die and ‘commercials’ are siphoning updated / added data constantly… one way. As one poster commented, put it in OSM today and it shows up on Google Maps the next day. ;p)
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Whether something is “better” than OSM certainly depends on your use case; many will happily accept that OSM is incomplete if that is balanced out by, you know, the whole thing being free and open. The crucial thing is that OSM continues to attract mappers to make it better; if those were to stay away because something else is more fun to contribute to, then we’d have a problem. But we don’t have a problem just because some in-car navigation system has pretty 3D pictures.
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Hi, your concern is noted and appreciated. It’s kind of difficult to respond constructively to general foreboding about the future, but you have me wondering:
The hardest part about being a mapmaker is that everyone judges your map solely based on how well it performs in their own backyard, disregarding all the wonderful things it gets completely right elsewhere. (I’ll let you in on a secret: no map passes this test completely.)
So far in this thread, we’ve heard from folks in Europe who feel optimistic about our accomplishments; meanwhile, you point out a different experience in Japan. Do you think this perception might be common in your region? Do others in OSM’s Japanese community share this sense of pessimism?
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Well, Uber and Pokemon GO are both using OSM and combined has more downloads than Google Maps, soooo. I’m happy to announce that GM’s days are counted.
But in more serious note, people always seem to forget that osm is not a software, it’s not indented to be used alone. It’s database that is used by A LOT of different services. There are maps, navigations, taxis, goverment services, games and more.
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If we’re talking about OSM vs. commercial services such as Google Maps, this thread is related and already contains an extensive discussion about the topic. Something I’d also like to add, which hasn’t been brought up yet, is that the “future of OSM” in relation to these commercial services doesn’t solely depend on how OSM evolves, but also on how these services evolve. I don’t want to get too off-topic, but at least the follow aspects are important here:
- Just because one service is popular now, doesn’t mean it will remain popular. The downfall of services doesn’t only depend on the service itself, but can also depend on company decisions, court rulings or major changes in civil law, …
- Just because something is presented as being “the future” by the company selling it, doesn’t mean it will be adopted on a large scale and/or replace existing concepts. Yes, Meta, I’m looking at you and your “Metaverse”.
- Any prediction of how the OSM ecosystem will evolve is unreliable because of the vast amount of factors involved and the difficulty in predicting them. It’s mostly just speculation.
- The differences between Europe/NA and other parts of the world are also reflected in (some) commercial services.
Also, is the goal of the OSM project to fully replace other software? In my opinion no, just as the goal of LibreOffice isn’t to make Microsoft Office obsolete, or the goal of Wikipedia isn’t to reduce the sales of encyclopedias to zero.
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It may be a long shot - but maybe government can be persuaded to release their building dataset?
It is not an easy task but it was achieved for example in Poland* where relatively high quality building datasets are available for imports without any restrictions whatsoever (sadly, still need some review - but it takes far less effort than drawing them manually).
*admittedly I have no idea HOW it was actually achieved with BDOT10K. If anyone knows about how such thing was achieved in Poland or elsewhere it could be very interesting story to share.
I am curious what kind of datasets are used by people making cycling/hiking maps in Japan.
What kind of data source is used by FB for their maps?
Are there some high-quality datasets that are available for use but at the same time on license making impossible to import them into OSM?
(disclaimer: poor quality imports make things worse, not better. Wild importing is not a solution and many areas suffer from say low-quality landcover imports)
Note that in many countries “OSM is just barely usable” is still better than any existing competition.
Maybe Japan has better alternatives available while OSM is just starting?
Thanks for all help! Note that this kind of project is not done in a day, month or a decade - but is long term one.
So frustration is definitely understandable in many cases.
What kind of competition is in Japan? Google Maps?
Is there any open data project competing (maybe wining) with OSM? What kind of data source you would use for making own map/scientific research/new app?
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Multiple things in this post are just wrong (amount of money, statement about google copying from OSM), pls don’t start a 
worthy subthread, in a thread that is already
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OpenStreetMap != OSMF
As the individual sums are not disclosed it is not quite clear how much the event sponsorship was that went to the OSMF is (which is taxable and not a donation).
New funds that directly went to the OSMF are $57k plus the difference between the previous membership tier and platinum.
Not knocking that at all, but it would be misleading to claim that MS donated $150k to the foundation.
Games? What games use OSM?
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OpenStreetMap is a community of hobbyists that have got together to build a geospatial thing. Most of us would not consider ourselves to be in competition with the commercial providers of maps.
It’s a hobby, I do it for the fun.
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I’m a long time fan of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Nice to see it uses our data 
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I’m now rather responding generally than to single persons, I guess.
In Japan I have seen OSM only one time, which was surprisingly on a website of a shrine in central tokyo.
All others are based on google, yahoo or some unknown companies.
I understand, that it might not be the aim of OSM to get number 1 worldwide, but at the same time I ain’t got the feeling that it will get bigger in Japan, as it is also missing so much that it is mostly a pain for anyone who would like to use it. So, working in your freetime to do some small mapping even though it might never be used ain’t got that much of a sense, I think.
Even if thinking about importing buildings and all that from some sources, I ain’t got any experience in that but would say it is rather difficult to get that data.
Also, if I’m right the japan community is mainly based in tourism-heavy cities and ain’t got that many people.
Although, ironically, more “big in Germany”.
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Japan is home to a formidable domestic mapping industry, so I can understand why you’d look at OSM and find the data lacking by comparison. I also encounter this reaction quite often as a mapper in Silicon Valley, where the volunteer community is relatively tiny. But as others have expressed here, OSM is not just about catching up to well-resourced companies but also about redefining mapmaking on our own terms. In that sense, we can be as successful as our imaginations allow us to be.
I find it interesting that you consider privacy to be OSM’s main selling point to consumers. I spend a couple hours every fortnight trying to convince people from my area to become OSM contributors. In several years of doing this, I don’t think privacy has come up even once, but many other qualities of OSM have gotten people excited about the project, such as the ability to literally put your hobby on the map, or query and download the data without asking for permission. Some have gotten excited simply because armchair mapping looks like a nonfiction video game.
You don’t think small-time mapping is a worthwhile pursuit. You’d be right if each mapper were mapping in isolation, never sharing with each other, but we’re actually cooking stone soup and the result will be delicious. Think of all the people who would enjoy small-time mapping and would love to share their passion with the world but haven’t gotten the chance, all because someone else decided it wasn’t a good use of time and didn’t tell them about it.
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I see OSM popping up a fair bit in everyday life (and I’m not even in Europe!). Examples include…
- Maps in news articles.
- The most popular weather app in my country.
- Strava.
- Pretty much every hiking/outdoors app in existence.
So OSM certainly doesn’t feel dead to me 
I will admit though, it’s frustrating how there’s no real OSM-based competitor to the Google Maps app/website. The closest thing we’ve got is probably Organic Maps, and while it’s amazing, they just don’t have the resources to compete toe-to-toe with Google. Hopefully this will change one day, but I’m not holding my breath.
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In Belgium, OSM data is used quite a bit in other services, both government and non-goverment; this wiki page has an overview.
The battle against the tech giants is one you will never win. Maybe, instead of focusing on the growth on the projects, its community or use cases, we should pride ourselves on what OSM does excel at, and try to improve the quality of data, not quantity. Higher quality data will lead to more applications using OSM, thus increasing the number of people who have heard about the OSM project, thus enlarging the community in the long term. The “poor data quality / few applications / small userbase” situation isn’t just a static situation, it’s a vicious cycle that will continue unless you break it.
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When I explain OSM to people, I always say that almost every map they interact with and which isn’t a government map or Gmaps has at least some OSM DNA in it.
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