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One of the internet’s most successful crowdsourcing projects passes the 20-year mark
Frominternet protocolsandoperating systems , todatabasesandcloud serving , some technology is so omnipresent most people do n’t even know it exists . The same can be said aboutOpenStreetMap , the community - drive platform that serves companies and software package developers with geographic data point and function so they can trust a little less on the proprietary incumbents in the space . Yes , that mostly think of Google .
OpenStreetMap is the handcraft ofSteve Coast(pictured above ) , a University College London “ dropout ” ( Coast ’s own discussion ) who has since gone on to work in various map- and location - related character at Microsoft , TomTom , Telenav and — as of today — Singaporean ride - hailing firm Grab .
Coast is n’t directly involved on a twenty-four hours - to - day basis at OpenStreetMap any more , but in ablog poston Friday tick off his cosmos ’s 20th anniversary , he acknowledged two precede success stories from the unresolved source kingdom that convert him that something like OpenStreetMap might have legs .
“ Two tenner ago , I be intimate that a wiki map of the world would work , ” Coast wrote . “ It seemed obvious in lighting of the succeeder of Wikipedia and Linux . But I did n’t sleep with that OpenStreetMap would work until much later . ”
While OpenStreetMap is a short like Wikipedia for maps , the comparison with its encyclopedic vis-a-vis is somewhat trivial . for certain , they are both gargantuan collaborative projects , but there is a world of difference between sharing your geeky knowledge ofmicronationsand mapping out geographic feature on a world scale .
Today , OpenStreetMap arrogate more than10 million contributorswho map out and ok - melodic line everything from street and buildings , to river , canon and everything else that constitutes our built and natural environments . The starting point for all this is data derived from various source , including publicly useable and donated aerial imagery and maps , source from government activity and private organizationssuch as Microsoft . Contributors can manually add and edit data throughOpenStreetMap ’s editing tools , and they can even hazard out into the wild and map a whole new area by themselves using GPS , which is useful if a novel street crops up , for example .
As exclusive creator , Coast was the driving force behind all the former software package development and advocacy work , eventually setting up the U.K.-based nonprofitOpenStreetMap Foundationto superintend the undertaking in 2006 . Today , the Foundation is supported primarily bydonations and memberships , withless than a dozen voluntary board members(who are elect by members ) channelise key determination and managing finances . The Foundation counts just a exclusive employee — a system engineer — and a fistful of contractors who ply administrative and accounting support .
OpenStreetMap ’s Open Database License ( ODbL ) countenance any third - company to use its data with the appropriate attribution ( though this attribution does n’t always happen ) . This includesbig - name corp such as Appleand VC - backed unicornslike MapBox , through a who ’s who of tech companies , includingUberandStrava , the latter tapping OpenStreetMap data point for road , trail , parks , point of interest and more .
More recently , the Overture Maps Foundation — an initiative backedby Microsoft , Amazon , Meta and TomTom — has leaned heavily on OpenStreetMap dataas part of its own efforts to construct a feasible alternative to Google ’s surround mapping garden .
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There ’s little question that OpenStreetMap has been a success these past 20 years , a success that would n’t have been possible without the internet and people ’s desire to make something worthful that ’s owned by everyone .
“ OpenStreetMap managed to map the universe and give the datum off for free for almost no money at all , ” Coast notes . “ It managed to sidestep almost all the job that Wikipedia has by virtue of only representing fact not sentiment . If OpenStreetMap is a medium , what is the message ? For me it ’s that we can go from nothing to something , or zero to one . ”
Besides affordability and accessibility , there is at least one other good reasonableness why an open map dataset should survive , and it all comes down to the feeling of who gets to “ own ” location . Should corporal Jagannatha such as Google really get to see to it it all ? By any reasonable idea , a placement monopoly is not a positive thing for society .
As OpenStreetMap contributor and free software advocate Serge Wroclawskinotes : “ Place is a divvy up resource , and when you give all that world power to a individual entity , you are give them the power not only to tell you about your position , but to work it . ”
