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I think the playing field has changed significantly since Serge wrote those words — he was likely referring to projects like CloudMade (now defunct) and Mapbox ,which sought to offer generic map services on top of OSM’s dynamic map database (rather than enhance in-house products where mapping is ancillary to their core value proposition like it is for FAAM). He makes an interesting argument that OSM itself should be offering these services rather than letting companies piggyback on the efforts of countless volunteers while capturing all of the economic value.,That’s mostly because so few people have even heard of OpenStreetMap, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people rely on it during any given month. If you’ve ever opened Snap Maps or Apple Maps or Bing Maps or even just peeked at the dash of your obnoxious neighbor’s new Tesla…you’ve used OSM.³,Many of the founders of the project, as well as others, have launched commercial services around OSM. Unfortunately, this creates an incentive to keep the project small and limited in scope to map up the gap with commercial services which they can sell.,In that talk, Jennings outlines the findings presented in his research. Not only was there already significant corporate investment happening in OSM in 2018, but in many cases corporate editors were responsible for the majority of edits in the specific geographies they were focused on. For instance:,But one thing that is clear even to a casual observer like me: one of the consequences of increased corporate involvement in OSM is a significant backlash from members within the OSM community that feel the community (and data) is being irreversibly adulterated by these profiteering intruders.,For those paying attention, none of what I outline below will be news. However — outside of a relatively small cluster of weirdos who pay attention to trends in geospatial technology— almost no one seems to be paying attention.,It is honorable for you to try to change and adapt and grow throughout your life. Trust that you will. But you are not responsible for using your suffering as self-improvement. Your responsibility is to evolve, not optimize. When life gives you lemons, you do not owe anybody a glass of lemonade.,For areas where corporate teams are active, on average, the non-corporate editors are now responsible for less than 25% of total road editing activity, which is down from closer to 70% in 2017.²,“[…] none of these companies is essential to OpenStreetMap. They are contributors, but OpenStreetMap could work perfectly well without them […] the mainstay of OpenStreetMap is the millions of hobbyists, individuals that contribute to OpenStreetMap.,I’m in no position to comment on most of the things I write about. But in this instance, I’m particularly unqualified — OSM has amassed a long-lived, fantastically diverse, and inherently fragmented community. I’ve never even commented in one of the forums.,In a more recent talk from State of the Map in July 2020, Jennings presented updated figures showing that the torrent of corporate contributions only increased from 2018 to 2019 and beyond with Amazon and Apple trending along the steepest slopes:,Jennings noted, importantly, that as of 2018 non-corporate editors were still responsible for the majority of activity on OSM (about 70% of all edits) and were significantly more active on edits to buildings, places of interest, and amenities.⁴,Also interesting to note is Mapbox’s apparent decision to stop investing significantly into direct OSM edits and contributions. Apple was responsible for more edits in 2019 than Mapbox accounted for in its entire corporate history…I don’t have a good explanation for that. I wonder if they decided their effort could be more highly leveraged on core web mapping technology rather than manual digitization.,In May of 2019, Jennings co-authored a paper with Dipto Sarkar and Leysia Palen titled, Corporate Editors in the Evolving Landscape of OpenStreetMap. If you prefer the research in presentation form, this talk is a fabulous summary of their findings:,A vocal minority of voluntary contributors to OSM seem to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder when it comes to the suits. A consistent undercurrent that I’ve noticed is skepticism about the motivations and incentives of for-profit firms. Here’s a typical sentiment excerpted from Serge Wroclawski’s magnificently controversial blog post, Why OpenStreetMap is in Serious Trouble (published in February of 2018).