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What OpenStreetMap Can Be (systemed.net)
An anonymous reader shares a blog post on OpenSourceMap: Most OSM commentary focuses on unimportant minutiae (layers, for goodness' sake, as if it's still 2004) without seeking to examine what makes OSM unique -- and whether that's still relevant in a rapidly changing market. Could OSM become a dead-end curio while Google, Apple, and an increasingly self-sufficient Mapbox hare off in another, common direction? OSM's continuing differentiation from Google/Apple boils down to two points.
First, a non-commercial imperative. Google and Apple (and Mapbox, TomTom, HERE) are beholden to their shareholders and investors. They do what makes them money, which means car navigation. (Once human-controlled, now, increasingly, self-guided. When people ask "How far ahead of Apple is Google Maps?", what they usually mean is "Who will get to self-driving cars first?") OSM, however, isn't ruled by shareholder value, but by the preoccupations of its contributor base. (We'll come onto that demographic later.) Whether that's a good thing depends on what you want from a map. But it's clearly a point of differentation.
Second, ground truthed local knowledge. Surveying by locals is the gold standard of OSM, building a rich, intricate compilation of contributors' preoccupations. The painstaking human curation of areas and topics remains unique to OSM. Neither of these are under threat from Google/Apple. Outsourced quick-fire digitisation of Street View-type imagery in cheap labour countries doesn't give you this. Nor does image recognition. OSM's points of differentation remain clear. In OSM's early days, commentators used the phrase "democratising mapmaking," and it remains true. You choose what to map; and you choose how to use the map. You participate. Other maps are a one-way street: sure, you can contribute (actively through map corrections, or passively through using a mobile app that phones home), but the provider chooses what you get back.
First, a non-commercial imperative. Google and Apple (and Mapbox, TomTom, HERE) are beholden to their shareholders and investors. They do what makes them money, which means car navigation. (Once human-controlled, now, increasingly, self-guided. When people ask "How far ahead of Apple is Google Maps?", what they usually mean is "Who will get to self-driving cars first?") OSM, however, isn't ruled by shareholder value, but by the preoccupations of its contributor base. (We'll come onto that demographic later.) Whether that's a good thing depends on what you want from a map. But it's clearly a point of differentation.
Second, ground truthed local knowledge. Surveying by locals is the gold standard of OSM, building a rich, intricate compilation of contributors' preoccupations. The painstaking human curation of areas and topics remains unique to OSM. Neither of these are under threat from Google/Apple. Outsourced quick-fire digitisation of Street View-type imagery in cheap labour countries doesn't give you this. Nor does image recognition. OSM's points of differentation remain clear. In OSM's early days, commentators used the phrase "democratising mapmaking," and it remains true. You choose what to map; and you choose how to use the map. You participate. Other maps are a one-way street: sure, you can contribute (actively through map corrections, or passively through using a mobile app that phones home), but the provider chooses what you get back.
The problem is OpenStreetMap is not easy for editing or browsing on a computer.
I have edited OpenStreetMap through the "Edit" button on the web interface at www.openstreetmap.org, and found it a polished and user friendly experience. They have a nice tutorial that leads you through the basics, and then it's quite easy to use. The tutorial is on "scratch" data discarded when you are done so you can try things there without risk.
In the end, who would contribute to Google or Apple maps voluntarily when you could contribute to OSM and have your edits be part of an open dataset? One you can bulk-download and process on your computer as you see fit, for any purpose you see fit, offline, without being at the mercy of a megacorp for your use of the data?
Disclaimer:I've got no involvement with OSM here except the above, where I added names of some local lakes that were nameless in the dataset before and added part of a newly constructed road.
One thing i like about google maps vs OSM, is the satellite/aerial imagery. OSM doesn't have it.
Especially when trying to get to a particular place in a park at the beach, or industrial park or shopping center or condo complex or resort etc... often the maps just show the 'lot'. But nobody has filled in all the little details... the buildings, structures, parking lots, pools, fences, water fountains, flower beds, large rocks, gravel area, tennis courts, whatever.
Yeah, much of that could be on the map. But its often not, and landmarks like a little grove of trees or a flower bed, or a water fountain, or an exposed rock... the photo just gives more detail.
Likewise, street-view -- sometimes looking at complex highway connections where there's 4 or 5 highways all meeting; sure the map shows all the exits and ramps and stuff, but its often helpful to see it as an areial photo or street view -- you can see the actual lane markings, dividers, merges, as well as get a better sense of what it's going to look like with the layers of under passes and over passes so you get a better idea of what lane and what rampts you need and what it looks like as you approach. A map... is sometimes just too abstract to be clear enough.