OpenStreetMap Hits One Million Registered Users

An anonymous reader writes "OSM passed the one million registered users mark! Sure, similar to Wikipedia, the number of active contributors is a factor of 5 lower (something like ~200k) but the growth of data is impressive. So why not have a look at your neighborhood and assist on mapping? Nothing big, just visit OSM bugs and add for example your favorite place and a house number."

I have a bug to report...

[damn_registrars]

... the link to "OSMBugs" in the summary doesn't work.

Re:I have a bug to report...

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I have been able to correct the issue locally by going to osmbugs.org [osmbugs.org].

Re:

[Darinbob]

I also notice there are no links to OpenStreetMap in the summary, or a description of what it actually is. (hint, it's .org not .com)

Re:Wikimapia

[yellowbkpk]

Wikimapia does not distribute their data with an open license. Even if they did, every single drop of their data was derived from Google Maps satellite and map data, breaking the Google terms of use. I imagine if you tried to do anything serious with Wikimapia data you would get slapped by Google.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if you like giving your data to a couple of Russians who don't care about copyright infringement. They actively encourage tracing from google imagery and maps. Wile Google hasn't taken action against them as of now, they definitely could because this is a clear violation of the Google maps terms of service. Also, can you actually get a dump of all wikimapia data like the OSM weekly planet file? I think they were considering such a thing but last time I looked, this was not an option which greatly limi

Must resist temptation to add houses...

[Anonymous Coward]

As places like "Great place to get nice weed" or "Has sluts inside" .

It's a sore one.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

As places like "Great place to get nice weed" or "Has sluts inside" .

It's a sore one.

amenity=brothel actually exists. Both kinds of places are legal in some countries, so yes - they can be put on the map too.

Better Than Before

[ronark]

Haven't been there in a while. The accuracy in my area (NEPA) was terrible. I had made some improvements, but became discouraged when someone reverted them to mimic what was on Google Maps. Google Maps in horrific in the NEPA area, so I was upset that my work was destroyed by someone who would just blatantly copy. After visiting today, it was nice to see that the NEPA area has been significantly improved. It is much more up to date than my Garmin at this point. It would be nice to get OSM on the thing if th

Re:

[dargaud]

How do you know when something gets reverted ? Do you get an email or do you have to go back and check ?

I've known OSM since its very beginning and my first thought was 'right, this project SO needs critical mass that it'll never happen'. Then, since I do a lot of mountain biking and one of my favorite website [vttrack.fr] shows all the existing GPS tracks of various websites related to mountain biking on various map background (Google, IGN, OSM, etc), I started to notice that for some areas OSM was actually more accu

Re:

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I got on board with OSM early on and they don't notify you if someone has changed something you added or had previously changed but for large modifications which some people do for some reason they are easy to spot if you focus on "your" area. I notice this when someone decides that the sidewalks and walking paths in parks are actually bike paths even though there are designated bike paths that are also marked. Good on you for contributing. I contribute a lot as I like to use it as a source against which I

Re:

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I don't think it will get killed by Wikipedia style complaints as maps seem to be less politically charged, unless you are in India/Pakistan or Japan/China/Korea/Taiwan. You still do get people defacing parts of the map, and there is a fair amount of blatant stupidity but the stupidity factor goes down once a contributor understands what they are doing. I know I made plenty of mistakes early on.

There *is* a way to get the map on your Garmin

[Herve5]

http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ [openstreetmap.nl]
has been working for years I think. I did use it in Canada (coming from Europe, I only had euro mapping).
My main issue is rather the Garmin software itself, and I'm patiently waiting for more developed open source turn-by-turn softwares. (what exists on tablets is already striking, including non-monopoly ones like Blackberry -I have great hopes for the coming linux ones)

My area is already filled out

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I would add stuff to my neighborhood but at this point I would almost have to start mapping out individual trees. Well it isn't quite that bad but I do go on OSM binges every now and then and have a lot of the buildings (some with full attributes include), roads, power lines, walking paths, other structures, ponds, parks (including equipment, sports field, toilets, and drinking they contain), parking lots, parking isles, etc mapped out already for my town. Areas that I hunt I have public land outlined as well as correcting the roads and adding in the official or unofficial trails that exist. I find it is a better use of my OCDness than acquiring cats or other things.

Re:

[SteveDorries]

I do it in spurts too, I mapped out Walt Disney World when I first started since the family and I go often. A lot of the contributors from the USA seem to do it that way, I think it's because the TIGER data-set covers so much of the roads.

Re:

[Bob the Super Hamste]

The TIGER data-set is good for federal roads and even some state level roads but gets a bit dogy at the local level since reality very often doesn't line up with the TIGER data. Buildings and other stuff is basically all user added and when I go on a OSM binge I add lots of other stuff like buildings, fences, bike or foot paths, and just about any thing I can find to map or trace.

Re:

[Herve5]

There are a couple of sites that'll allow you to select a zone, locate every kind of potential improvement in the area (like, two roads that come adjacent to less than 1m, are they in fact connected) and then correct them, but being behind a very severe firewall at the moment I can't even find them for now :(
Hopefully will come back later...

Re:

[yellowbkpk]

This is incorrect. OpenStreetMap changed licenses midway through 2012 from CC BY-SA to Open Database License [opendatacommons.org]. Apple has not confirmed that they're using OSM data, but if they are they would most likely be using OSM data that was obtained before the license change and is thus CC BY-SA. As far as I understand it both licenses allow data to be distributed "behind DRM".

Re:

[R3d M3rcury]

Apple has not confirmed that they're using OSM data, but if they are they would most likely be using OSM data that was obtained before the license change and is thus CC BY-SA.

Actually, Apple and they finally got around to crediting them (like they're supposed to do with CC-BY-SA or ODL). [osmfoundation.org]

Re:

[emj]

DRM is a no no with CC-by-SA, it says it like this: "You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that restrict [the access to the work]" ( the CC-by-SA legal code part 4a [creativecommons.org])

But the license that OSM has adopted, the ODbL will allow you to do what you want with the created map, as long as you give attribution on it (and share the mapdata).

Re:

[Richard_at_work]

So long as my work is available from OSM itself, it's not hidden by their license. Someone else "using DRM" doesn't automatically make your contributions vanish from the face of the earth, they are still available from the same source as they always were.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Err what? For road name you click on the existing street in the editor and change the "name" field. Hit the "Save" button, wait 2 minutes and refresh the map. You are correct that dentist/doctor isn't in the presets (although veterinarian is...) but that doesn't mean you can't map it. See the OSM wiki [openstreetmap.org] for more "tags" that you can use to label things.

Re:Devil in the Details

[yellowbkpk]

What gives you the impression you can't mark dentist/doctors offices or fix street names? For example, click on the street whose name you want to fix. On the left column you should see a list of attributes for that street. You can change it there and click Save. Done!

Re:

[mwfischer]

It's a proposed feature that isn't implemented and requires crawling through documentation.

I'll pass. Bad UI, lazy user.

Re:

[emj]

It's not a proposed feature, it has been used over 14 thousand times in OSM..

But you got bad UI and Lazy user correct, and that's enough reason if you have no interest in maps, and your local area.

good for some purposes, needs driving directions

[bcrowell]

I like OSM and have spent a bunch of time adding edits to it. It's great for things like hiking trails and urban running trails, which usually aren't in google maps. There are some very nice web-based interfaces for making contour maps (example from closedcontour.com [closedcontour.com]). What's really missing is decent driving directions. Yournavigation.org sucks.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Try http://map.project-osrm.org/

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

As mentioned, http://map.project-osrm.org/ [project-osrm.org] is one of the best routers that uses OSM data. There is also http://open.mapquest.com [mapquest.com] which might even integrate with the MQ mobile app so you can find a route in a browser, then send it to the MQ app to take in the car. There is also routing on http://maps.cloudmade.com/ [cloudmade.com] although sometimes it seems like they are a little out of date.

But there is code being worked on to integrate OSRM into the osm.org website itself.

Re:

[bcrowell]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I tried OSRM, and it seemed just as bad as yournavigation.org, if not worse. (I wanted to do a side-by-side comparison, but yournavigation apparently isn't working right now due to hosting problems.) As with yournavigation, OSRM breaks the route down into a large number of microscopic parts. Also, when I asked it for directions to 4926 W. Rosecrans Avenue, Hawthorne, CA, it inexplicably changed my request to a request for directions to South Tajauta Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, wh

Re:

[DennisOSRM]

Why don't you go ahead and file a bug report. OSRM is under active development.

Re:

[emj]

Try Osmand. Its $4 for Android and navigation works. It is also GPL

It's also free [google.com], but sure it's better to support the devs [google.com] by paying

OSM bugs isn't as useful as actual nodes

[anarcat]

Contributing to OSM is not hard. It's like a wiki, you register and you can edit everything. Even if your neighborhood is mapped, you can still work on adding amenities like restaurants, parking spots, post boxes and all the stuff a person that doesn't know the neighborhood would find useful. I personally keep business cards of the good restaurants i visit and post them on OSM regularly.

If you use flash, there's a web-builtin editor called Potlach that's really good. If not, you use jOSM that's shipped with all major distributions and which is also very good (my favorite, even if Java</troll>).

Thanks Apple Maps

[a0me]

Since Apple Maps uses OpenStreetMap, I'm not really surprised of the jump in user numbers.

Re:

[j-beda]

While Apple did use old OSM data (from around April 2010) for the low-res background for iPhoto, I'd love to see a clear example where "here's something in Apple Maps" and "here's something in OpenStreetMap", and there both obviously the same yet subtly different from what's on the ground.

So far I don't think anyone's been able to pin anything down. There have been lots of suggestions made but they can mostly be explained by the fact that if Map A maps a place and so does Map B, they're expected to be similar because they're the same place!

It looks like Apple does give a credit in iPhoto: http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2012/03/08/welcome-apple/ [osmfoundation.org]

Thanks Slashdot!

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

A quick look here:

http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/newestosm.php [neis-one.org]

Suggests roughly twice as many new mappers (at least in the UK) during the last 24 hours than would be normal.

How to improve OSM street numbers systematically?

[tr0tt3r]

I have a project to geocode (i.e. use an API to give an address, get back latitude and longitude) many many addresses. Sometime, OSM works just fine, and provides just the right answer. It appears that 2/3 of the time this is true. 1/3 of the time, while OSM street data is aware enough to understand street names, it has no way of understanding the numbers. All of the sophisticated OSM guis have a mechanism to add this information. But this is very very complex to use. You have to be able to understand the