Who Really Owns OpenStreetMap? A Personal Concern About Big Tech in OSM

[adreamy (깨몽/dreamy)]

Reading this thread and the many thoughtful replies has left me feeling somewhat conflicted about the values I have associated with OpenStreetMap.

To be honest, I didn’t start contributing to OSM because of any grand philosophy or ideology. I simply began editing because I needed to. But as I became more involved, I learned more about what I believed OSM stood for—openness, decentralization, freedom to collaborate, and a community built around shared stewardship rather than commercial ownership. At least, that was how I came to understand OSM.

That understanding was what motivated me to continue contributing. I chose to spend my time improving OSM instead of Google Maps or the dominant commercial map used in my country. I even spent time studying OSM’s principles and community practices because I wanted to contribute in a way that respected those values.

If utility had been my only motivation, I probably wouldn’t have contributed to OSM at all. In the region where I live, almost nobody actually uses OSM. From a purely practical perspective, my efforts have very little visible impact. Yet I kept contributing because I believed OSM represented something fundamentally different from commercial mapping platforms. That belief—not efficiency or popularity—was what made my contributions meaningful.

For that reason, I don’t believe corporate participation is inherently a problem. OSM is open to everyone, and companies should absolutely be free to use the data and contribute to improving it.

My concern is not that companies participate. My concern is whether, over time, the priorities of the project could gradually shift toward the interests of organizations that naturally have business objectives and far greater resources than individual volunteers. Simply saying that “companies are part of the community” doesn’t fully address that concern. To me, the more important question is not whether companies belong here, but how the community ensures that the values and priorities shaped by volunteers remain just as influential as corporate interests.

Perhaps this is the source of my confusion.

If embracing greater corporate participation is a natural direction for OSM, then what is the unique value that continues to distinguish OSM? I don’t believe OSM’s identity has ever been about being anti-business or anti-capitalist. Rather, I believed it was about remaining independent of any single commercial interest, and about building a project where individuals could participate on equal footing in a genuinely open community.

So I would genuinely like to ask those who have been part of this community much longer than I have:

As corporate participation continues to grow, what do you believe will continue to make OSM fundamentally different from commercial mapping platforms? And what principles or safeguards do you think are important to ensure that corporate participation strengthens the project without gradually redefining its priorities?

This post was originally written by me and translated into English with the assistance of an LLM.

[SimonPoole]

@adreamy

So I would genuinely like to ask those who have been part of this community much longer than I have:

As corporate participation continues to grow,

The problem with this question is that there is no indication at all that corporate participation is growing.

Actually I could easily show that at an OSMF level, corporate influence has diminished, replaced in some degree by corporate capture at an LC level, but still overall likely less (given they can march off to the Linux Foundation and get as much influence on Overture as they care to pay for, why would they bother with OSM at all?).

[map_per]

@SimonPoole

The problem with this question is that there is no indication at all that corporate participation is growing.

Same with the number of edits done by organized teams. The numbers there dropped again after a peak around 2021: Organised Teams Statistics

[Matija_Nalis]

@adreamy

Yet I kept contributing because I believed OSM represented something fundamentally different from commercial mapping platforms

yes, it is hugely different (and that openness which is not governed by corporate interests it is main reason of me contributing too)

@adreamy

To me, the more important question is not whether companies belong here,

For the record, I think that that question was answered back in the days of ODbL schism, as one of the main arguments for the move were to be more friendly to corporations using OSM in their established proprietary ways. (spoiler alert: I wasn’t a big fan of a license change at the time, and preferred staying with CC-BY-SA. But that water has passed under a bridge long time ago).

@adreamy

, but how the community ensures that the values and priorities shaped by volunteers remain just as influential as corporate interests.

One of the ways it is ensured is ODbL license itself – it makes it unsuitable for classical corporate takeovers, as they’d have to share the source data with everyone. Thus, the invention of Overture by corporations as an alternative approach.

To quote John Philpot Curran: “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”

So, there is your answer - how community ensures that? By eternal vigilance.

So try to educate other people about risk of #enshittification, and why “well GoogleMaps works good enough for me” won’t hold forever but anything guided by corporate interest will inevitably become enshittified and/or dead sooner or later; and why they should care about such things as open data as in OSM, FOSS software, and generally the advantages collaborating with their fellow human being peers; instead of accepting digital slavery to soulless corporate giants whose interests are bound only to quarterly profits, even if it means setting whole planet on fire.

@adreamy

Rather, I believed it was about remaining independent of any single commercial interest, and about building a project where individuals could participate on equal footing in a genuinely open community.

I hope it is just due to complex translation process, so here is some feedback – use of past perfect tense here and around (to me at least) seems to give impression that you “used to believe it, but no longer do”. But I hope that is incorrect, and you meant “I believed, and still do”, right?

@adreamy

As corporate participation continues to grow, what do you believe will continue to make OSM fundamentally different from commercial mapping platforms?

Exactly it being what it is: OSMF being nonprofit with mission to keep data open, and not being owned by some corporation, and in any case it only supporting, but not controlling, the OpenStreetMap Project. And mappers believing in OSMF not selling out, and nominating themselves and other people caring about freedom into it.

And, most importantly, data being governed by OdBL, which makes it unattractive for hostile takeover.

@adreamy

And what principles or safeguards do you think are important to ensure that corporate participation strengthens the project without gradually redefining its priorities?

Which priorities are you thinking of? OSM is not a sentient being, so it can not have priorities of its own. OSMF (which kinda might guide it indirectly) might have some stated priorities/plans, and those are guided by its members via voting, elected representatives and stuff like that.

But most importantly, each individual mapper has their own priorities. The fact that, say, TomTom might have interest in mapping roads and buildings, does not in any way impinge on my priority to map cycling infrastructure and benches.

Nor does the, say, work on closed source mapy.cz affect my work on open source SCEE.

If for example TomTom decided to map much more roads in OSM in the future then I can map benches, still nothing bad would happen to me and my usage of data and its openness – in fact, everybody would profit from their increased engagement (assuming that their data is of good quality – but that is whole another topic related to organized mapping)

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As for the Overture, you might say then that your question actually becomes transformed to “how does the community ensure that Overture does not become much more popular than OSM to the point of making OSM irrelevant”. I do not think that is a risk, as overture kind of depends on its symbiosis with OSM to survive. So even if it becomes more popular (which it does not seem to be on trajectory of doing), still OSM would continue to thrive.

Sure, some companies might prefer using Overture themselves, but community mappers will still continue contributing to OSM (for the same reason they do now), which will then be reused by Overture. And everybody would be happy with that status quo, so I see no incentives for companies to try to disrupt that, as killing the goose that lays golden eggs wouldn’t bring them any (not even short term) profits.

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But if you have some specific fears of what might go wrong if there is more corporate mappers in OSM, and/or examples where similarly protected open projects were destroyed by corporate interests, please do share them, so we can analyze them together, and hopefully dissuade them or invent additional protections against that happening, if there is a need.^[1]

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1. and, as noted above, this is not an one-time invitation – this is your (and everybody else’s) life-long duty, should we continue to care to keep OSM open as it is – which we absolutely should. ↩︎

[Matija_Nalis]

@SimonPoole

I could easily show that at an OSMF level, corporate influence has diminished,

It would then be appreciated if you were to do that (if it is not a big inconvenience) as substantiated claims would be adding much more to the discussion then ones which are not. Thank you in advance!

@SimonPoole

replaced in some degree by corporate capture at an LC level

For those of us not well versed in corporate lingo, could you translate what “corporate capture at an LC level” means?

[SimonPoole]

It used to be that a majority of board members worked in companies in the geo data business, it used to be that major tagging schemes were supported and proposed by corporate entities, it used to be that people were employed to do marketing for OSM by outside companies, it used to be that major bits of “core” OSM software was written and maintained by employees of companies interested in OSM.

The last has been replaced by the OSMF employing staff and naturally this could give donors some leverage, particularly if the donations are earmarked, but it is less influence than if they were employees of third parties that could move them to different projects at a drop of the hat.

LC == local chapter.

PS: long arguments can be had over why all of that has changed, a lot went away before Linux Foundation/Overture so that can’t be all of it. IMHO it is simply that the long grind that it has taken and continues to take to build a good world wide geo-database has a time scale that is totally unsuitable for startups and big corporate interests. It isn’t a coincidence that the only Overture member that has any real interest in OSM is Tomtom.