{"id":1789654,"date":"2020-11-22T13:26:06","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T18:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1789654"},"modified":"2020-11-22T13:26:06","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T18:26:06","slug":"openstreetmaps-unholy-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2020\/11\/openstreetmaps-unholy-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenStreetMap’s ‘Unholy Alliance’"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenStreetMap, says Joe Morrison<\/a>, \u201cis now at the center of an unholy alliance of the world\u2019s largest and wealthiest technology companies. The most valuable companies in the world are treating OSM as critical infrastructure for some of the most-used software ever written.\u201d Corporate teams, rather local mappers, are now responsible for the majority of edits to the OSM database; Morrison speculates that their participation is about \u201cdesperately avoiding the existential conflict of having to pay Google for the privilege of accessing their proprietary map data.\u201d In the end, he argues that we\u2019re in a strange-bedfellows situation where corporate and community interests are aligned. (To which I\u2019d add: for now.) [MetaFilter<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Previously: OpenStreetMap at the Crossroads<\/a>; OpenStreetMap \u2018In Serious Trouble\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OpenStreetMap, says Joe Morrison, \u201cis now at the center of an unholy alliance of the world\u2019s largest and wealthiest technology companies. The most valuable companies in the world are treating OSM as critical infrastructure for… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,114],"tags":[386],"class_list":["post-1789654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-industry","category-web-mapping","tag-openstreetmap","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1785013,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2018\/02\/openstreetmap-in-serious-trouble\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789654,"position":0},"title":"OpenStreetMap ‘In Serious Trouble’","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"19 February 2018","format":"link","excerpt":"Much chatter on Twitter about a blog post criticizing OpenStreetMap that made it to the front page of Hacker News; problem is, said chatter hasn't been linking to said blog post. Here it is: \"Why OpenStreetMap is in Serious Trouble,\"\u00a0in which\u00a0Serge Wroclawski argues that OSM has lost its way on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Industry"","block_context":{"text":"Industry","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/industry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1785945,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2018\/07\/a-mobile-mapping-roundup\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789654,"position":1},"title":"A Mobile Mapping Roundup","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"16 July 2018","format":"link","excerpt":"Rerouting. Lifehacker talks about how to prevent mapping apps from rerouting you on the fly, and lists some options. [R. E. Sieber] Traffic. Traffic congestion is a key feature of mobile mapping, and predicting it involves looking at historical data. CityLab reports on a recent study suggests that time-of-day electricity\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Map Errors"","block_context":{"text":"Map Errors","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/map-errors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1785131,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2018\/03\/openstreetmap-and-its-women-contributors\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789654,"position":2},"title":"OpenStreetMap and Its Women Contributors","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"19 March 2018","format":"link","excerpt":"When I started contributing edits to OpenStreetMap in earnest, I couldn't help notice certain idiosyncrasies in its tagging: for example, there was a tag for brothels, which I didn't need to use, but there wasn't one for daycares, which in Quebec there are rather a lot of. That seemed odd.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Web Mapping"","block_context":{"text":"Web Mapping","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/web-mapping\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1787558,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2019\/08\/complaints-about-facebooks-automated-edits-in-thailand\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789654,"position":3},"title":"Complaints about Facebook’s Automated Edits in Thailand","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"1 August 2019","format":"link","excerpt":"Facebook's AI tool has added some 480,000 kilometres of previously unmapped roads in Thailand to OpenStreetMap, BBC News reports, but some local mappers have been complaining about the quality of those edits, and the overwriting of existing edits by Facebook's editors: see OSM Forum threads here and here. In particular,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Industry"","block_context":{"text":"Industry","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/industry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1819828,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2023\/11\/mapping-north-korea-in-openstreetmap\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789654,"position":4},"title":"Mapping North Korea in OpenStreetMap","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"8 November 2023","format":"link","excerpt":"Mapping North Korea in OpenStreetMap is, by necessity, an exercise in armchair mapping\u2014i.e., drawing maps from aerial imagery and other data sources\u2014because on-the-ground mapping is, to say the least, impractical. French OSM user Koreller has created a North Korea mapping guide for OSM contributors. See Koreller\u2019s diary entry about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Web Mapping"","block_context":{"text":"Web Mapping","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/web-mapping\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1832195,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2024\/06\/openstreetmap-is-dealing-with-some-vandalism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789654,"position":5},"title":"OpenStreetMap Is Dealing with Some Vandalism","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"19 June 2024","format":"link","excerpt":"It seems OpenStreetMap has had to deal with a wave of vandalism attacks lately. If you see some nonsense on OSM, this post on their community forum outlines what to do about it (it may have already been taken care of even if it\u2019s still appearing, so check for that;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Map Errors"","block_context":{"text":"Map Errors","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/map-errors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1789654"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1789657,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1789654\/revisions\/1789657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1789654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1789654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1789654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}