

Ask HN: Anyone making money from open data? - ericthegoodking


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bertil
I have heard of a couple of companies working on maps: local crime rates,
parking tickets and school ratings allow them to improve property estimation.
OpenStreetMap is a big source for them correcting official occupation maps.
They sell the resulting maps to real-estate agencies and distribution
companies.

Funny detail: their maps are more accurate than official ones on many aspects;
when I asked at a conference if they’d consider giving back to the community
and authorities, they’d say it wasn’t worth it, they wouldn’t take it. When
pressed (fairly certain OSM would welcome and had detailed APIs for it), they
confessed not trying, because it wasn't in their commercial interest.

The impact of their work appears to heighten urban issues: segregation and
white flight, gentrification and pricing out incumbents… But then again:
that’s the obvious consequence for more information. I doubt the solution to
those issue is by regulating those services.

Local volunteers for OSM are aware of the free riders and would consider
negotiating giving back, but they don’t thing it's worth their non-existant
legal ressources. Government officials appear intellectually unaware that this
could happen.

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chippy
In our town we have a new Open Data hub website which I getting government
support. So that's one angle.

On the other side of town we have an Open Data Institute - and these (again
centrally funded) run a number of corporate level training days around open
data. The idea is to make a little ecosystem around it.

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chippy
See the OpenStreetMap ecosystem.

Admittedly it's not quite the same vein as most Open Data, as the majority of
Open Data implies it coming from closed sources.

I'd also include other geospatial companies who provide visualisation and
analyses tools which are using other things apart from OSM.

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cotsog
Not mine, but I stumbled on this site recently that packages open data in
different DB/file formats: SQL, Excel, Access, CSV.

[http://www.easydbs.com/](http://www.easydbs.com/)

Edit: typo.

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ericthegoodking
interesting!!

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wingi
This is a easy passive income project generating $30/month.

[http://bit.ly/QjA7eg](http://bit.ly/QjA7eg)

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karanbhangui
[http://panjiva.com/](http://panjiva.com/) (port authority data),
[http://www.buildzoom.com/](http://www.buildzoom.com/) (contractor licensing
boards), and [http://enigma.io/](http://enigma.io/) (aggregating and cleaning
up many sources) come to mind.

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ericthegoodking
Honestly it isn't quite obvious the way these firms are using the open data.Do
you mind expounding how how they are using the open data?

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karanbhangui
For Panjiva: [http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/12/panjiva-government-data-
pl...](http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/12/panjiva-government-data-
platform.html)

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ig1
Factual and MapBox are two companies making money from open data.

