Fuck AI companies! There is good faith use and then there’s whatever the fuck this is. For some reason apps that are actually useful (OsmAnd, CoMaps, Mapy, …) all figured out how to mirror OSM data on their own servers so that it’s only downloaded once per app once per month or so, and then users never interact with osm.org. Meanwhile a trillion-dollar industry can’t figure this shit out!
It’s not a secret, this page lists like 20 ways how to download data, depending on your use case: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Downloading_data
Unfortunately it requires an actual brain to read and understand that article.
can’t figure this shit out!
Oh they can. They just won’t.
I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t an effort being done surreptitiously by a well-known producer of online maps, with the intent of strengthening their monopoly.
I think it isn’t:
- First of all Hanlon’s razor.
- It doesn’t affect map users and rendering clients directly, as they display extracts, they don’t use the main website directly.
- Power users also work with offline clients, e.g. I download the data, work on it offline, then upload it, so what I notice from this is sometimes the download or upload times out, but I just retry it and it works after a while. It’s annoying, but not a big deal from my point of view.
- I think it mostly affects casual mappers, who add a lot of very important data, but by volume it’s much smaller than the data contributed by the big mappers. There was a very good presentation about this in 2014: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SotM_2014_session:_The_Long_Tail_of_OpenStreetMap
- It affects mostly sysadmins, who will burn out.
Hanlon’s razor always beats my Occam’s razor. Well put.
Slightly off topic, but do the large Map apps (Google, Apple, etc) donate to OpenStreetMap at all? I’m pretty sure they use their data, or at the very least check for updates to the open map. I’ve had it a couple times where I’ve updated the map, then a couple weeks later, it’s updated in Apple Maps and Google Maps. If that is the case then surely they can pay to support the service.
Google doesn’t use osm officially. I don’t know the status of Apple, while they may use some data from osm, their map is very different
There are big companies who use it (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon), and they donate money and manpower, they have employees actively working on osm.
You can see organised editing activities here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities This is where they should document how they contribute data.
Financial sponsors are listed on the webpage of the foundation: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Corporate_Members
About your perception of copying from osm: a lot of data on those maps are contributed by users, who may copy it from osm or may not. This problem is actually as old as mapmaking, the only way to prove they copy your map is to include “trap streets” and see if it shows up in other maps.
Apple maps used to use OSM for many parts of the world, and still uses it in some remote areas. They even have a team of employees being paid to edit/update it: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities/Apple
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They used to use some data from osm, public transport in some parts of Poland, and they displayed the required attribution correctly:
https://xcancel.com/MapAmorePH/status/1453863816110952450
I have a feeling, it’s just some users who copy from osm to gmaps, and they don’t know it’s illegal. They are already not the smartest people on earth, as they work for free to a for profit company…
I think Google’s fault is mostly just not enforcing copyright laws. I’ve never seen something on gmaps copied from osm, but I reverted a lot of changesets because they copied from google. So your experiences are not as general as you think
How can you tell that something is copied from Google ?
Some people write that to changeset comment. Osmcha even flags changesets using such terms automatically.
If something is suspicious, I can ask them in a comment. They can lie, but most people do this because they don’t know it’s illegal.
Oh didn’t realise that. I’ve definitely seen people use Google’s street view as an aid for double checking at least I suppose before
In addition to the other companies already listed, Lyft does have an OSM team for providing updates to the map based on their own street level imagery:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lyft
I see them updating the roads in my area from time to time. So, while they’re not one of the Corporate Members, they are at least donating their time to help update the maps.
They definitely take additions from osm however Google seems incapable of noticing changes or deletions for osm. Which as led to some roads going through new houses near me. So I’d be cautious if they provide mapping data back to the project
It’s illegal, you should report it if you are sure it was from osm. But I guess they get data like that directly from municipalities, or road construction companies, or from the traces of users they spy on
https://wikinearby.toolforge.org/ finds wikipedia articles related to shit nearby.
always found it pretty neato!
