There’s obviously a lot more to it than just sticking it to Google. Facebook, for instance, has ambitions of building ne

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:

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

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.

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.

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http://go.acaps.cat/npt/Video-dusseldorfer-v-iserlohn-roosters-v-de-de-1kqg-19.php

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https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/Video-HC-Lugano-Geneve-Servette-HC-v-en-gb-ypo-.php

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http://go.acaps.cat/npt/video-lettonia-v-italia-v-it-it-1lsg2-23.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/video-HC-Lugano-Geneve-Servette-HC-v-en-gb-jum-.php

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https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/video-Maccabi-Tel-Aviv-Alba-Berlin-v-en-gb-vui30122020-.php

http://main.dentisalut.com/zwo/Video-Maccabi-Tel-Aviv-Alba-Berlin-v-en-gb-mbi30122020-.php

, we have some data about a person on a list. This data includes basic information like the person’s name, age, and profession. Let’s assume for the sake of this example that this is part of a response we received back from a web request and that we’d have to parse multiple responses just like this. If we wanted to get the person’s name, we could simply access it by the index value:

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).

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

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.

The concept is simple: undermine your competitors’ intellectual property advantage by collaborating with aligned entities to cheapen it with a free and openly licensed alternative.

Whatever the motivations of these mega-corporations, they’ve succeeded in carving out a niche for themselves within the OSM community whether the hobbyists like it or not. I’d like to highlight a nuance often lost in this discussion — just exactly who are these companies hiring to add data to the map? They are often already-active, enthusiastic contributors to OSM. These are people living the open data fanatic’s dream: getting paid to do a job they find so fulfilling they would otherwise do it for free in their spare time.

I wrote earlier this year about the concept of “Commoditizing Your Complement,” in my explanation of why Facebook acquired Mapillary and then gave away all the data they had just purchased for free.

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.

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.

I would wager that corporate participation in OSM is less about directly monetizing souped-up versions of OSM data provided as modern web services and more about desperately avoiding the existential conflict of having to pay Google for the privilege of accessing their proprietary map data.⁵

“[…] 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.