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Open Source Google

Why OpenStreetMap Should Be a Priority for the Open Source Community (linuxjournal.com) 122

Posted by EditorDavid from the sharing-the-road dept.
"Despite its low profile, OpenStreetMap is arguably one of the most important projects for the future of free software," argues Glyn Moody, author of Rebel Code: Linux And The Open Source Revolution, in a new Linux Journal article shared by long-time Slashdot reader carlie: The rise of mobile phones as the primary computing device for billions of people, especially in developing economies, lends a new importance to location and movement. Many internet services now offer additional features based on where users are, where they are going and their relative position to other members of social networks. Self-driving cars and drones are two rapidly evolving hardware areas where accurate geographical information is crucial. All of those things depend upon a map in critical ways, and they require large, detailed datasets. OpenStreetMap is the only truly global open alternative to better-known, and much better-funded geodata holdings, such as Google Maps.

The current dominance of the latter is a serious problem for free software -- and freedom itself. The data that lies behind Google Maps is proprietary. Thus, any open-source program that uses Google Maps or other commercial mapping services is effectively including proprietary elements in its code. For purists, that is unacceptable in itself. But even for those with a more pragmatic viewpoint, it means that open source is dependent on a company for data that can be restricted or withdrawn at any moment....

Although undoubtedly difficult, creating high-quality map-based services is a challenge that must be tackled by the Open Source community if it wants to remain relevant in a world dominated by mobile computing. The bad news is that at the moment, millions of people are happily sending crucial geodata to proprietary services like Waze, as well as providing free bug-fixes for Google Maps. Far better if they could be working with equal enthusiasm and enjoyment on open projects, since the resulting datasets would be freely available to all, not turned into corporate property. The good news is that OpenStreetMap provides exactly the right foundation for creating those open map-based services, which is why supporting it must become a priority for the Open Source world.
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Why OpenStreetMap Should Be a Priority for the Open Source Community More

Why OpenStreetMap Should Be a Priority for the Open Source Community

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  • 'long time reader'? Carlie is the publisher of the Linux Journal. She runs it and has for decades.

  • true, but needs focus on users first (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Arathon ( 1002016 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:19PM (#56795756) Journal
    This is definitely a real issue, but it doesn't mention the most important part - the part that all the big mapping companies already know.

    If you want people to contribute their data (and time) en masse, you have to give them a high-quality mobile experience.

    If Open Street Map were as easy to use as Google Maps is on mobile, people would try it. And then OSM would get their traffic/new road data organically. But until OSS developers start prioritizing the average user's experience, they will simply never get to where they can compete with Google, Waze, Apple, et al.

    • Re:true, but needs focus on users first (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:30PM (#56795796)

      This is definitely a real issue, but it doesn't mention the most important part - the part that all the big mapping companies already know.

      If you want people to contribute their data (and time) en masse, you have to give them a high-quality mobile experience.

        If Open Street Map were as easy to use as Google Maps is on mobile, people would try it. And then OSM would get their traffic/new road data organically. But until OSS developers start prioritizing the average user's experience, they will simply never get to where they can compete with Google, Waze, Apple, et al.

      I have used OSM on my tablets that didn't have any cellular support, bur did have GPS.

      I think it's better than a GPS only device like a Garmin or Tom Tom.

      Not as good as google maps, but much less "creepy."

    • And it wouldn't be hard to do either!

      Right now I really hate popping open google maps because it takes forever as it loads all of the stuff to advertise to me. As soon as I open it, half the fucking screen is covered with shit I'm not interested in. I don't want your paid advertisements for places in my hometown. I know it better than you. And the places I spend my money don't advertise with google.

      Somewhat ironically, earlier today I got pissed at this stupid bar of icons for restaurants, cafes, gas stations, etc. across the top of google maps just a few hours before this story popped up, and I dug through settings to see if I could figure out how to disable it. I was unsuccessful.

      So yeah, do what google maps did, but drop the creepy icons for my home and work, drop all the advertisements, and just produce a fast, streamlined mapping and directions app. Do that, and I'll even donate some money and time to the project.

      • Sure. Google spends billions, literally, on gathering and processing the data for Google Maps. Doing things like auto-detecting detours, auto-detecting construction zone changes, knowing where every lane in the road is, figuring out where the entrances to buildings are when users aren't telling you, and gathering realtime traffic data isn't cheap. Just how much do you intend to donate?

        • Most of that is in fact cheap if you have a lot of users.

          You make it sound as if you think there is a room full of humans doing it. For parts there is, like knowing where all the lanes are, but they work for the government and map the roads and release detailed GIS data in the public domain.

          • It seems that Google holds the data center requirements for Google Maps close to the belt. The only clue I could find is that in 2012 Google Maps had over 20 Petabytes of data. It's surely at least several times that by now and likely growing geometrically. That's a lot of expense. In 2014, their vehicles had scanned over 7 million miles. That's a hell of a lot of imagery to handle but it's what you have to do to map the world.

            They likely handle peak loads on the order of millions of complex GIS operations

            • They likely handle peak loads on the order of millions of complex GIS operations per minute to maintain traffic data.

              Did it ever occur to you that a whole lot of us don't care about that and don't want that? If I want traffic conditions, I'll go find traffic conditions. But when I want a map, I want a map, and I don't want all that overhead and spying.

              Right now google is tying that in more and more. It now is guessing where my home and work are to "better plan my commute", and wants me to give it the exact addresses. It wants to store commonly taken routes to better suggest how I get places.

              I want zero of that 99% of the

              • Sure, but a lot more do, and the application of people just wanting a "map" to view is not a market large enough to bother serving anymore.

                Where you live and work is likely fully known by many people, businesses and the government. It isn't even controlled by you. I have my contact's addresses in my system so that I can just say "take me to [insert contact name]". I never have to state an address for a business. Google knows them all. You're also very likely to have tied your identity to your address throug

                • You can't know what the demand actually is, because all the cell phones come with convenient bundled apps. The people who go out of their way to use a map that is only a map might be the only ones even exercising a decision! Everybody else might just be using what they were provided, and so we'd know nothing about how happy they would be if provided something else.

                  This doesn't occur to you, but "feature phones" already had voice-activated contact search that ran entirely on the phone. Also, offline map rout

              • As above, in many cases it isn't even google doing it; they're just integrating the government data stream into their platform. Places with high quality traffic data already release it; here in Oregon we have it, and we're not a rich state, nor do we have the traffic density to lower the cost per person. They also provide it on a map, but since they don't advertise on it, they also don't pay the phone companies to preinstall it on phones.

                People also ignorantly credit google with the transit data, but it is

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Herve5 ( 879674 )

        On Android, you do have a very simple option, within OSMAnd, to remove all or a selected part of these Openstreetmap icons...
        To me, on that platform, what you request is already done. And of course OSMAnd is available without GApps, through F-Droid (and also on the google market, for lazies)

    • Re:true, but needs focus on users first (Score:5, Informative)

      by plover ( 150551 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @06:21PM (#56796150) Homepage Journal

      "Focusing on users' needs" is not what the OSM Foundation does. OSM simply hosts map data in a database. That's it. Their only software is an API into that database, plus a web viewer and a couple of web-based map editors.

      OSM does not make a mobile app, or routing software, or host a traffic conditions database. They didn't even write the rendering libraries that turn the map data into the image tiles you see on their own site! They use a renderer called mapnik. All those tools that exist today were built by independent third parties.Some are open source, while others are commercial.

      The field is wide open for a Waze-like company to come along and use the OSM data as their map source. A couple have even been tried; I understand there's a fairly popular one in use in Germany.

      • Very good but OSM gets the data from people who use apps that use OSM data the same way Google Maps gets much of its data from its users but if very few people are using apps powered by OSM then its data pool won't really increase in any meaningful way. So if nobody else is writing an app to use that data that is going to have a meaningful amount of users then OSM is going to have to.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by 605dave ( 722736 )

      This, a million times this. It seems so many open source projects have a contempt for the normal user. Almost no care is put into UI/UX and documentation. Which is self defeating since they want everyone to see the genius of their solution and use it. I have been involved in open source for over a decade, and this observation has never changed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )

      OsmAnd~ is pretty good these days. It's still not necessarily trivial to find everything you need quickly because it's often buried in inconsistent layers of menus but it can be learned. Great for offline navigation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fgouget ( 925644 )

      If you want people to contribute their data (and time) en masse, you have to give them a high-quality mobile experience.

      A lot of people seem to like the Maps.me [google.com] interface. In fact I was telling a friend about how OpenStreetMap allowed people to have a GPS abroad even without a data connection and he told me he did not see the point since he just used Maps.me. Well, Maps.me uses OpenStreetMap. Duh!

      And if you don't like Maps.me there's Osmand+ [f-droid.org] (also available in the Google Store), and plenty of others, including a lot for specialized uses such as hiking [google.com] or cycling [google.com].

  • Please take a close look at the project (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:22PM (#56795762) Homepage Journal

    OpenStreetMap is a sort of open data that everybody needs, and should be available under the same terms as Open Source software or very similar ones. Open Source projects don't always succeed, for separate reasons from their desirability. Note that OpenOffice existed for years and got great benefit from Sun's contribution of StarDivision's work, but project participation was handicapped by Sun's management. When LibreOffice split off, it was suddenly so much more viable.

    OpenStreetMap has had a commercial involvement which might not have helped - and as far as I can tell is mostly over. And I hear it's difficult to become an editor. I am not a geodata developer. I'd like to hear from some folks who are, and who have tried to participate or who can try now and report back.

    • I am a contributor to openstreetmap. It was very simple to become one - just sign up, get a login and you are good to go. openstreetmap is in some ways really wonderful, but still have some drawbacks which need to be solved, which become obvious when you begin reading the discussions behind the project.

    • Note that OpenOffice existed for years and got great benefit from Sun's contribution of StarDivision's work, but project participation was handicapped by Sun's management. When LibreOffice split off, it was suddenly so much more viable.

      It was almost thecsame story as Netscape/Mozilla.

      I am probably one of the few people who purchased a license for Star Office for Linux when it was commercially available, before Sun bought Star Division. Star Office is the basis for Open/Libre Office. I now work at a company where Open Office is the standard.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I also have contributed mapping data to OSM.

      It wasn't hard really: they have a very nice web interface to do this. There are also standalone packages such as josm which are more complex but also more powerful.

      The online web based editor has a very good tutorial it hand-holds you through the first time that explains everything. It takes about 10-15 min, but it will introduce you to all the basics.

    • Re:Please take a close look at the project (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @05:02PM (#56795924) Homepage Journal

      The main issue with OpenStreetMap is that it is very labour intensive. It relies on humans to do far too much of the work.

      Google gets most of its map data from AI doing image recognition these days. They buy satellite images and have the AI trace out roads and buildings. The AI can even see the shape of buildings, which is why everywhere has accurate 3D buildings on Google Maps now.

      Then they send round Street View cars which read things like door numbers and traffic signs. They can read business names too. They can recognize bus stops, gates and entrances, zebra crossings and other features of the landscape.

      Not only does that mean that their maps are up to date and extremely accurate, it also massively reduces the amount of work that humans have to do.

      OpenStreetMap should think about ways to do something similar. Open source street view pods, photos captures by drones, dashcam footage processing... Anything to automate the process.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        They can read business names too. They can recognize bus stops, gates and entrances, zebra crossings and other features of the landscape.

        That's a good example of the difference today between professional and hobbyist developers. The first uses AI techniques to solve large scale problems in automated ways. The second uses brute force approaches and manual labor which doesn't scale.

        For small problems they can acheive similar results, for large problems, the limited scaling of the hobbyist techniques cannot touch what the professionals can do.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        OpenStreetMap should think about ways to do something similar. Open source street view pods, photos captures by drones, dashcam footage processing... Anything to automate the process.

        There is Mapillary which can process standard images, spherical images and dashcam recordings as well as OpenStreetCam. They intergrate with OpenStreetMap.

      • The main issue with OpenStreetMap is that it is very labour intensive. It relies on humans to do far too much of the work.

        If I might dovetail on this, there is a secondary issue caused by what you've specified: inconsistency. Relying on volunteers means you'll end up with some super dedicated people who will pour every waking moment into providing perfect data...and a bunch of people who couldn't care less, with data quality commonly reflecting both parties. Google has spent God-knows-how-much time and money making sure that every single street, no matter how obscure or infrequently traveled, is accurately documented.

        Automatio

        • You seem to be implying that Google Maps has consistently high quality data. My house doesn't exist on Google Maps (it does, and is correctly numbered on OSM) and the street that I live on is now half there, as of a couple of months ago, on Google Maps, in spite of the part that they've documented being finished almost three years ago and the half that they haven't being finished over a year ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by olau ( 314197 )

        Except it takes a couple of years for the Google car to come back next time...

  • The real bad news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:26PM (#56795780)

    The bad news is that at the moment, millions of people are happily sending crucial geodata to proprietary services like Waze

    The bad news is, millions of people are happily sending any and all data with complete disregard for the consequences to themselves and to society as a whole. Because for most people, being able to instantly send lolcats to their cousin, inform the world of their latest bowel movement or watching the soccer match live on their phone is much more important than liberty and privacy.

    Oh and by the way, Waze was bought by Google in 2013. Don't make it out to be a separate entity: it's part of the collective, and it's out for your data.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by panja ( 4992315 )
      I definitely agree that Waze and G Maps shouldn't be trusted... and I hate to admit that I rely heavily on Waze for the most accurate traffic data. How does the community fix something like that? Is it possible to have something like Waze without the creepy steal your data aspect?

  • How? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:28PM (#56795792) Journal

    Hand editing data will never achieve something to compete with google maps which is far more than just a streetmap. Google also has real-time traffic data, streetview, and sidewalk / path data sufficient to help me get to a destination's door. I use all of this on a near-daily basis and would love to see open source applications that compete with this functionality. I agree that the open data is critical to that but...

    Without fleets of vehicles and massive amounts of data center processing to convert images to information, how do we get there?

    The best possibility I can think of for getting much of it would be to attract large numbers of people to run an app that tracks them at high resolution and donate the data. But there are problems.

    How do you attract users to run the app? Google does it with their real-time driving directions app, but that presents a chicken - egg problem because you've got to get within reach of their capabilities to attract users to get the data necessary to get within reach of their capabilities.

    How do you pay for the compute time to process the live data into useful information such as realtime traffic flow, most used entrances, sidewalk paths, locations that must be missing a road on the map (many users crossed at driving speed from point A to point B where no road exists), etc.

    Assuming you could crack collecting the data, how would you pay for server space for street view data?

    Realistically, the only way I can see getting open data of this size and complexity is for governments or large groups of companies to pay for it and choose to make it open data.

    • Couldn't there be mobile apps we would run on our phones that relied on Google Maps for navigation but shared our travel experiences to Open Street Map. I wouldn't mind running an app like that for awhile.

      • Certainly. If they made an app that just collected movement and location related data and stored it, I'd be in despite the privacy concerns. Many would balk at the privacy issues though even though they routinely allow google to collect their position data.

        But, like your other responder said, that is just the tip of the iceberg of what is required to use the data.

        First, you must have a high density of users. For example consider the problem of detecting bus stops. One user getting onto a bus, riding it to a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fgouget ( 925644 )

          For example consider the problem of detecting bus stops. One user getting onto a bus, riding it to a stop, and getting off tells you nothing. You could tell that they transitioned from walking to riding at a point and back to walking at another point. But they could be getting into a car.

          Or they could be using Jungle Bus [google.com] and provide the name of the bus stop, the bus lines that stop there, whether there's a bench to sit, etc.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by fgouget ( 925644 )

        Couldn't there be mobile apps we would run on our phones that relied on Google Maps for navigation but shared our travel experiences to Open Street Map. I wouldn't mind running an app like that for awhile.

        You're in luck, there are multiple applications you can run on your phone what will help OpenStreetMap:
        StreetComplete [f-droid.org] - Lets you fill in missing map details for things around you as you walk in the street.
        Mapillary [mapillary.com] - Provides street-view images for OpenStreetMap.
        OpenStreetCam [openstreetcam.com] - Provides street-view images for OpenStreetMap.

        Regarding street-view, Mapillary is the more advanced of the two right now, at least in terms of coverage but also, as far as I can tell, with regards to what they can do with the

  • Humanatarian impact: Puerto Rico after hurricane (Score:5, Informative)

    by cooldev ( 204270 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:57PM (#56795894)

    I think there are multiple roles for OpenStreetMap to play, but one that came to my attention was mapping areas where Google, etc. haven't gone in order to help get food and power to people after a disaster.

    I spent (too little) time voluntarily mapping out areas of Puerto Rico, through a well-coordinated effort to analyze and review satellite and aerial photos of less densely populated areas. This type of crowdsourcing is pretty cool...

    One of the sites to visit: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team [hotosm.org]

  • Why doesn't the government do this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Oceanplexian ( 807998 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @08:00PM (#56796430) Homepage
    I'm usually not one to suggest that the government take over private services but it seems like it would make a lot of sense that local governments should publish street map data in a public format. After all, they're the ones who build the roads in the first place. It seems like the tools and current tools they use to do mapping and surveying is in ancient, scanned document formats, or sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere gathering dust.
    • Agree. An up to the minute map with cm level accuracy, precise definition of lanes, heights of curbs, locations of potholes, weight limits, speed limits, sidewalk locations, crosswalk locations, etc. should be considered a safety critical part of a modern road just like the pavement.

    • The current tools used by government are called GIS (geographical information systems), and they have existed for several decades now. Chances are, your government has all the digital mapping data you could possibly want, it's just not publishing it.

    • Some do. OpenStreetMap was instrumental in persuading the UK government to include some of the government-maintained maps under an open license [openstreetmap.org]. Historically, high-quality mapping data has been regarded as a military asset, because if you want to invade a country then having decent maps is essential. That's less important in an age of satellite photography (any foreign power that could plan in invasion almost certainly has satellites that can provide them with accurate mapping data) and so there's a slow

  • Comments benefit public, not advertisers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @08:01PM (#56796436) Homepage

    I spent most of my career building GIS maps for Calgary, Canada, for the water & sewer systems; our whole asset-management strategy was based on a GIS map/database of all infrastructure. (Some screen snaps: http://brander.ca/work.html [brander.ca] )

    It was like the sun coming out when I found open-source GIS solutions in PostGIS and QGIS about 2013, and it freed me from the "ESRI jail", wherein for large corporate mapping, ESRI is the 800-lb gorilla of the market, and all its data formats are proprietary and impenetrable. That was when I found OSM, and the salient feature to me is this:

    * For a building to be named in Google, the business has to pay Google.
    * For a building to be identified on OSM, somebody has to like that business enough to type it in. It just needs one fan.

    That's it. One serves the google accounts payable dept, one serves the general public. Really, if the map is good enough to find routes and get you there, the actual map service is a wash, and this feature is critically important.

  • break up Google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Reverend Green ( 4973045 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @12:58AM (#56797412)

    Uncle Sam is going to get out his trust-busting stick and break up Google/Alphabet.

    Maps - separate company
    Search - separate company
    Surveillance / "advertising" - separate company
    Android - separate company
    Chrome - separate company

    Once he finishes bringing peace to Korea, President Trump is gonna start channeling Teddy Roosevelt. Get ready for it!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Once he finishes bringing peace to Korea,

      The comb-over conman ain't bringing shit. Its President Moon who is responsible for everything. And his people know it, Moon has an 85% approval rating and his party just swept national elections a couple of days ago. Turmp's approval rating in s korea? 30%.

      The one good thing trump has done is not shit all over Moon's hard work. He came to singapore, he blew KJU and then he left. Good fucking riddance. The south koreans don't need him getting in their way.

  • I looked at using OpenStreetMaps as a data source for drawing hiking maps throughout the United States. OpenStreetMaps has some fairly good hiking trail data.

    But I ran into two problems. First, address data for the United States in OpenStreetMaps is virtually non-existent. It appears OpenStreetMaps is concentrating on providing a specific address for specific buildings--which makes sense in countries which do not do sequential street addresses. But in the United States you can also extrapolate the street ad

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