What OpenStreetMap Can Be (systemed.net) 47
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.
needs frontend/ui (Score:4, Interesting)
OpenStreetMap is pretty damn good. For example, the OsmAnd android app allows you to browse in excellent detail any offline downloaded map. In this sense it's far superior to Google maps. It can even calculate offline directions.
The problem is OpenStreetMap is not easy for editing or browsing on a computer. Try finding a GUI. There are two dozen and they all suck. OpenStreetMap needs a professional editor/viewer for all platforms and it could be vastly more popular.
Re:needs frontend/ui (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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?
More than a billion people?
Re: needs frontend/ui (Score:1)
He said voluntarily, not unknowingly
Re: (Score:2)
Contrast is excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenStreetMap is pretty damn good. For example, the OsmAnd android app allows you to browse in excellent detail any offline downloaded map. In this sense it's far superior to Google maps. It can even calculate offline directions.
The problem is OpenStreetMap is not easy for editing or browsing on a computer. Try finding a GUI. There are two dozen and they all suck. OpenStreetMap needs a professional editor/viewer for all platforms and it could be vastly more popular.
One problem with Google maps is the (lack of) contrast.
On Google, choose any town or city and Zoom down looking for streets. The streets are juuuuust sligtly darker than the background, and there's no variation in the background. It gives the impression of a map of highways with lots and lots of empty space in between.
This was driven home to me recently when I wanted to find out where a road went in my area... and couldn't. It's impossible to trace the road with your eyes at a reasonable zoom level, and at the level where the road has labels you're too close to get an idea of the road relative to anything else.
Choose any town or city and Zoom down looking for streets. Roads in OSM are perfectly readable at reasonable resolutions, and you can even see the difference between different types of areas.
I don't know how "this makes money" on Google, but maybe somehow it does.
Re:Contrast is excellent (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Seems like a map client could integrate osm and freely available or at least cheap topo maps. I have national geographic topo!, for the West anyway. Regional collections include a low-zoom national map, and a high-zoom state (or so) map; they also offer a "back country explorer" iirc which has medium-resolution maps for the country.
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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.
You could probably use Google's satellite/aerial imagery as an overlay on OSM somehow?
With OSMAnd there's a thing you can do to get Google's live traffic as an overlay. I'm not claiming that I understood it but I got it working, lol
Re: (Score:3)
Both Google maps and the Apple map have two, actually three, majour flaws:
a) they don't show the scale, which makes it useless to guess a distance
b) depending on zoom level names of streets or places fade in or fade out and are invisible or to small to read
c) public transport fades in and out on the map depending on zoom level
b) and c) are super annoying, because you have e.g. a zoom level where you see a street name or public transport, you zoom in a bit deeper, it vanishes, you zoom even more deep and it
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The problem is OpenStreetMap is not easy for editing or browsing on a computer. Try finding a GUI. There are two dozen and they all suck.
Maybe they suck, but at least they exist, and there is a way to modify OSM data, unlike Apple Maps or Google Maps.
When I moved to a new house in a newly built district, I spent 1-2 hours to add our street and houses. It tooks 2 years until Google's new satellite imagery added the house...
Re:needs frontend/ui (Score:4, Interesting)
Openstreetmap has a more fundamental problem which explains the bad editors, but also the bad address search capability, the bad default map rendering, the bad homepage map (e.g. same tile map for everyone with local regional language. An American would see Chinese labels in china), and more bad things; It is mainly a database, not an end-user service. It is expected that third parties implement the end-user stuff. Unfortunately, the half-baked homepage map viewer never mentions that, giving newcomers the impression that OSM IS the homepage, and the homepage is poor compared to Google Maps's homepage, "therefore osm is poor".
This article argues that this model is the main reason OSM is not as successful as it should be: https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/02/16/osm-is-in-trouble/
privacy is the killer app (Score:2)
The main reason I only use OSM and the OSMAND app, is that I don't want my map searches and travelpatterns to become available to third parties.
None of the competitors can beat OSM on this. Not in functionality (offline maps, search, and navigation), but also not in trust (OSM is a non profit, so there is less incentive to sell or derive data).
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The main reason I only use OSM and the OSMAND app, is that I don't want my map searches and travelpatterns to become available to third parties.
+1. I don't care how good Google maps are... they are a non-starter because they mine my travels to add to my "advertising profile".
How about no?
Re: Only the bottom of the barrel? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
But the submitted article then whines about that article and then handwaves away most of the complaints about OSM claiming they are made by "neophytes" who just don't "get it."
Re: (Score:1)
To add:
Any pro-OSM thread on Reddit, Hacker News or elsewhere quickly descends into “but openstreetmap.org looks pig-ugly” / “but when I type my street address into openstreetmap.org it’s not found” / “but openstreetmap.org doesn’t have live traffic”. We know that’s missing the point, that osm.org is just a testbed for OpenStreetMap proper, the data that lets you solve these problems. We understand OSM’s direction of travel. Neophytes don’t. They see a single eccentric-looking (albeit lovely), purplish map they can edit. (That’s why everyone’s first edit is adding a footpath with name=Footpath or somesuch, thinking only about how it appears on osm.org.)
Boohoo. People actually expect software that works. What "neophytes"!
Its strengths are also its weakness (Score:2)
Google Maps uses artificial intelligence techniques with its gathered data so it needs less manual labor. OSM depends exclusively on manual labor. The bad is that if contributors aren't interested it's less complete than Google Maps (many places lack street numbers or aren't mapped). The good is that with people's interest the maps can be more refined than Google's.
What I completely disagree about is the unimportant minutiae. It's these things the ones that separate great products from the rest.
The provider chooses what you get back. (Score:2)
Automatic scaleability (Score:2)
Maps are about getting somewhere, going places and getting back again. Simple.
A walk in the woods, drop into a single track to nowhere or two track over the horizon; you go because its there. 1x1,2x2 and 4x4 all scale the same paths. Jeep made a brand out of getting you there. Famously, Jeep emerged out of WWII and into everyman's driveway. Jeep and 4x4 didn't takeoff for decades. But one thing changed everything - automatic scaleability. Jeep replaced manual shift transmissions with automatic shift. Wha