Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @01:01PM from the because-hole-in-the-wall-restaurants-are-the-best dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Over the past six months, we've all grown a bit more skeptical about who controls our data, and what they do with it. An article at The Guardian says it's time for people to start migrating en masse away from proprietary map providers to OpenStreetMap in order to both protect our collective location data and decide how it is displayed. From the article: 'Who decides what gets displayed on a Google Map? The answer is, of course, that Google does. I heard this concern in a meeting with a local government in 2009: they were concerned about using Google Maps on their website because Google makes choices about which businesses to display. The people in the meeting were right to be concerned about this issue, as a government needs to remain impartial; by outsourcing their maps, they would hand the control over to a third party. ... The second concern is about location. Who defines where a neighborhood is, or whether or not you should go? This issue was brought up by the American Civil Liberties Union when a map provider was providing routing (driving/biking/walking instructions) and used what it determined to be "safe" or "dangerous" neighborhoods as part of its algorithm.'"

4 of 162 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Because it's fucking awesome, that's why. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-14 13:06 · Score: 5, Informative

The level of detail is just fantastic, and I can carry the entire map on an sd card for offline use, including routing. It's plain awesome.
1. Re:Because it's fucking awesome, that's why. by Guest316 · 2014-01-14 13:57 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Openstreetmaps can't find a Starbucks in Seattle.
  That's a feature. Seattlites know good coffeeshops from Starbucks.
2. Re:Because it's fucking awesome, that's why. by websitebroke · 2014-01-14 15:10 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Try Starbucks Seattle. Turns out there are a bunch of them. Yeah, not even close to as nice as defaulting to finding things right nearby your location, but not completely useless, either.
Wikipedia of Maps? by rueger · 2014-01-14 13:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

Somehow I envision a Wikipedia of maps, with boundaries and street names changing at random if two groups can't agree.

Sure it may not happen in downtown Topeka, but imagine to geo-edit wars that will happen in the Middle East or other disputed territory.

--
Three Squirrels