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TomTom Flames OpenStreetMap

Posted by Unknown on from the you-might-die dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TomTom Navigation has a recently launched article on what they call the 'negative aspects' of open data projects such as OpenStreetMap. As there are no hard facts and details to the studies they refer, the OSM community identified this release as classic 'Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.'"

4 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why would it need studies? by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Informative

    "In some places, like where I live ... However, Bing Maps is the best one of them with most information"

    Yeah, we really really really need a new moderator option, -1 marketdrone

    I hate to say it but GP is telling the truth in the case of the UK, especially when it comes to walking trails. Look at this bing map view of a nearby valley. It clearly shows footpaths, contours, wooded areas, etc, you can see where to walk and how difficult the terrain will be. On the other hand the google map view of the same area shows the valley as a blank! I certainly find bing much better for hiking route planning, in fact I would go as far as to say its impossible on google.

  2. Re:We're better because we do the same thing! by Richard+Fairhurst · · Score: 5, Informative

    Essentially OSM works on the principle of "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". There are cases of vandalism in OSM, but they don't last very long; the community usually picks them up rapidly and reverts them.

    We have one advantage over Wikipedia in that it's easier for us to determine what's right. On Wikipedia, if one contributor says "John Doe's contribution to scholarship was important" and another says "no it wasn't", you get an edit war. On OSM, if one mapper says "this road is called Market Street" and another says "this road is called Market Road", we just go and look at the street sign. The rule is "what's on the ground". (The one place where this breaks down is disputed territorial borders, such as Northern Cyprus and Kashmir, but there are procedures in place for that.)

  3. Re:Why would it need studies? by amw · · Score: 5, Informative

    In addition to your very good point some of the commercial maps (used to?) deliberately add mistakes to their maps as a test that they can use to see if anyone is copying them.

    ye ye - I know [citation needed], don't feel like it

    [citation provided] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_streets

  4. Re:Why would it need studies? by Pete+(big-pete) · · Score: 4, Informative

    When you hear names like "tomtom", "garmin" and so on, these companies do not actually provide maps. They provide UI shells and minor map modifications but licence actual maps either from navteq or tele atlas (two biggest providers of mapping data in the world).

    TomTom bought TeleAtlas in 2008...

    -- Pete.

    --
    Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS