Help break the US hold on map data
Help break the US hold on map data
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26246923
Currently there's only 3 big players when it comes to maps. You've got Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Let's try to make OpenStreetMap the best map there is. Go grab StreetComplete and start mapping your surroundings when you're out and about.
All the data is under a public license and managed by a non-profit foundation in the UK.
It's very easy to get started, and quite addictive.
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OpenStreetMap is incredibly important. So many map applications and project composed from open-data is dependent on OSM (yes, european alternatives to map applications heavily depend on open-data of OpenStreetMap which is actually a database of geographic information, not only the map layer you often see).
I posted awhile ago about Organic Maps which also allows you to edit certain information. But StreetComplete is more fun :)
Microsoft and Apple use OpenStreetMap to an extent. Even TomTom uses it and, probably, Google. The better we make it, though, the less value adds other players can claim and no one can monopolize good street map data.
Yup. IIRC google mostly uses the data to fill in their own datasets and to double check nowadays (used to depend more on OSM).
But also every European product / FOSS project depending on OSM gets better with every contribution from people to OSM!
While I have seen anecdotal evidence for GMaps monitoring chabges in OSM to keep their data up to date, the only "filling in of Gmaps with OSM" I'm aware of is where they used a government dataset that itself was using the OSM license.
That could very well be. I don't have any sources at the moment to prove anything and base it on memory of reading about it somewhere that Both Google and Apple used to more heavily depend on OSM data but over time introduced contractors and more advanced remote-sensing/satellite imagery analysis.
Google never used OSM intensively. Apple has in some regions, but I'm not sure how it has evolved over the years.
Ahh okay, maybe I mix Google with Apple then, or possibly even Bing Maps from Microsoft?