
OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble - emacsen
https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/02/16/osm-is-in-trouble/
======
andrewljohnson
This post seems half right, half wrong.

Wrong that OSM should be a service provider and not a database - I think it
should be a database, and corporations are good for OSM. The post calls for
OSM to essentially become Mapbox. It's insanely expensive to be Mapbox, and
Mapzen just failed trying to be a less corporate version of Mapbox. And then
the usage policy part of the article is moot or at least not that
consequential if you don't believe OSM should be a service provider.

Right: Moderation tools need to be created/fixed. New mappers need to be
encouraged/onboarded better. Vandalism is a problem. OSMF culture is toxic.
Hidden gatekeepers are toxic. Imports need to be supported. Bots need to be
enabled, and we need to consider people who contribute code/tech/imports first
class OSM contributors and not just glorify the individual mapper.

Probably right: OSM needs layers, or even a more sweeping re-architecture to
allow better versioning, moderation, better tooling, and easier understanding
of the data.

Probably wrong: Expanding the scope of OpenStreetMap to include transient
data. Too much other work to do, maybe later for this.

~~~
pbowyer
> Probably right: OSM needs layers, or even a more sweeping re-architecture to
> allow better versioning, moderation, better tooling, and easier
> understanding of the data.

I have a hobby site about railways [0] I'm picking up again after a decade of
inactivity. I wanted to display a route map of each railway, with clickable
stations and the route highlighted.

I _can not_ work out how to do that. OSM has the route and station data (there
and in Open Railway Map [1]). I expected to find a layer called 'Railways'
with sub-layers, one for each railway, and I could export the data and
highlight it on another map.

Instead I have raster tiles, and no way to highlight the railway I'm talking
about. I know the data must be there somewhere but how on earth do I get it?

[0] [https://www.narrow-gauge.co.uk](https://www.narrow-gauge.co.uk) [1]
[https://www.openrailwaymap.org/](https://www.openrailwaymap.org/)

~~~
iamdave
The type of data you want for routes is probably in KMZ format. I took a few
minutes looking around openrailwaymap and their wiki but nothing immediately
obvious stood out.

[https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/railroad-
kmz](https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/railroad-kmz)

A brief google search came back with this; I haven't inspected the data or
even tried to use it to see what it contains, but the page description
indicates it may not be exact routes _you_ are looking for-but it's a start.
Implementing the data is a bit more work in order to display route maps,
something like the previously mentioned MapBox does this very interactively.

My email address is in the profile, feel free to shoot over an email if you'd
like some help with it. Depending on the complexity, I can probably devote a
few cycles this weekend to show you a one-off map with railway routes, and
show you how it's done.

~~~
voltagex_
Is KMZ really still the best way to go?

~~~
iamdave
Good question.

I'm only a hobbyist with GIS, so I can't really say or speak to how practical
of a format KML/KMZ are in production.

But that's a really good question.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
I work in GIS.

KML/KMZ is decently useful as an interchange format and simple rendering but
almost all web GIS software has better support for GeoJSON. It’s richer and
easier to work with.

I’ve never worked on a GIS system that used KML/KMZ in prod for rendering.
It’s usually shapefiles, PostGIS Geometry, ESRI’s proprietary GDB feature,
WKB/WKT or GeoJSON on the backend being served up to clients.

I have used it as a lightweight way to deliver simple data in the past though
for use cases where there was no proper client renderer (we would just tell
the end user to download google earth and open up the file)

------
SteveCoast
I'm the DRI for most of these problems. Random thoughts:

I think David Ogilvy said something like "Search all the parks in your city,
you'll find no statues of committees". Everyone was super keen to make OSM in
to a web of committees, and this is one root of the problem from an
organizational point of view. It's not super clear to me what the OSMF has
done in the last (to pick a number) 5 years. (I don't regard "doing the same
thing as last year" as relevant to anything, I just have a personal bias
towards new things).

From a technical point of view we merged sysadmin (who inherently want
stability) with development (who inherently want change) and stability won (it
doesn't involve arguments or as much work, I guess). That's why the API looks
the same way I designed it X number of years ago.

It's still a wonderful project, but more of a work of art than anything else.
It's not like wikipedia didn't have all the same problems. Making a project
that really evolves and grows over large periods of time is really hard. Like
- most of the things on the S&P 500 won't be there in 10 or 20 years or
something.

I think what really happens is that projects go through a lifecycle and
something new comes along to replace them, rather than anything getting fixed.
I'm not sure if this is a good example, but, you could try to "fix" Apache, or
you could just do this new thing, "nginx". For all kinds of reasons, the new
thing is more efficient. One of the few counter examples I think is going to
be Amazon.

The world has moved on from making vector maps and OSM solved almost all the
related problems (just not geocoding, which annoys me no end). It moved on,
because of OSM! All the money and interest in maps is now around autonomous
navigation, which means 3D maps and other things outside of OSMs area.

~~~
lucb1e
> I'm the DRI

All I can find is "Dietary Reference Intake" on [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/medical/DRI](https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/DRI) \-- what
do you mean?

(I agree with most of your post by the way (except for the bit about it being
art, which would mean it has no function except to be art), I'm just unclear
on what you meant here.)

~~~
SteveCoast
Directly Responsible Individual

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Coast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Coast)

~~~
itgoon
Oh. I was going with "Dirty Rotten Imbecile", from my youthful punk days.

I can think of some cases where it would still fit. You seem okay, though ;)

~~~
batisteo
My first reflex is to go to Urban Dictionary (!ud), and that's the first
result.

------
jedberg
Open maps used to be the job of the USGS. They stopped doing it because of
Google.

I was touring the USGS in Palo Alto about 10 years ago, and the librarian
there was lamenting the existence of Google. He said that while it was nice
that Google was doing all this work, it was causing the USGS to _stop_ doing
it, since they could get the data from Google.

He predicted that the USGS would get severely cut in their funding for mapping
activities because of it, and he was right. He was worried that all the best
data would be locked up in Google's servers, and he was right about that too.

~~~
jimmyrocks
I used to work in the building with the USGS map store. It was very sad to see
it close. It wasn't commercial map providers that caused it to close, it was
the avilablilty of USGS topo maps online, and a faster data collection to map
pipeline. You can still order maps printed on demand directly from the USGS.

------
acabal
I remember just a few years ago, I got a new phone and was interested in
replacing as many Google apps with OSS maps that I could. (K9 instead of
Google's mail app, etc.)

Naturally I turned to OSM instead of Google Maps. But I was really surprised
by how strange and difficult it was to install and use. As the author
mentioned, OSM itself doesn't have any apps, which is very confusing. After
some research I figured out that you have to download a 3rd party app. The 3rd
party apps that do exist all use different terminologies, require downloading
huge amounts of data and picking what maps you want ahead of time, and had
different levels of functionality. The UIs were universally terrible (at the
time at least).

Needless to say I quickly gave up on using OSM and turned back to Google Maps
--and I'm their perfect use case, a skilled techie with a deep interest in
using free software! I can't imagine trying to explain how to use OSM to my
mom, even if I somehow managed to install it for her.

I can't comment on the rest of the article but its usability worries are on
point.

~~~
lucb1e
> Needless to say I quickly gave up on using OSM and turned back to Google
> Maps--and I'm their perfect use case, a skilled techie with a deep interest
> in using free software! I can't imagine trying to explain how to use OSM to
> my mom

My mom got an iPhone gifted from my dad, so there's mistake number one (I
don't know of any decent OSM apps on that proprietary platform), but for what
it's worth, my non-technical girlfriend has no trouble with it. Then again,
that was 2014ish, not sure what time you're talking about.

> require downloading huge amounts of data and picking what maps you want
> ahead of time

It's not easy to find, I agree, but you can use it without downloading a
single map. If being online all the time floats your boat, you can do that (at
least in Osmand, the de facto app for Android).

> The UIs were universally terrible (at the time at least)

OsmAnd invested a lot of time in this. I didn't mind the old UI that much and
the new one has some things I don't like (but are probably easier for
newbies), but it might be worth a try again. Especially if you live in Europe,
and definitely if you live in the Netherlands or west Germany, the map data is
much more complete than Google's on everything but business information.

~~~
Accacin
I use Galileo, but it's the only one I've used on Android or iOS so I'm not
sure how good it is but it works for me.

~~~
lucb1e
Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out!

------
btilly
Here is my experience.

I work for a company that syndicates location data for businesses. We had a
couple of businesses that wanted to syndicate to OSM.

It. Was. A. Nightmare.

We have addresses for every store. We don't know where the building is. Any
store we place is going to be easy to place on a street near the building. If
you've not placed it inside of the strip mall on the right spot, other people
delete it. And what do you do with NYC? Suppose that you have a store that is
somewhere on the second floor of a skyscraper. We don't know where it is in
that building.

Have you tried to map out thousands of department stores? We know hours, phone
numbers, and addresses for each department. We have NO idea what the actual
store layout is. Without the layout, OSM basically didn't seem to want the
rest of what we can give them.

If a customer is willing to pay us to deal with OSM, we're going to discourage
them and ask for top dollar if they insist. It is that painful.

~~~
juliendorra
Are you complaining that OSM contributors rejected wrong or imprecise location
data about your client’s stores?

If you are, I would like you to also consider this from the point of view of
(maybe volunteer) contributors who prefer less data but correct data in OSM.
Maybe draw a parallel with Wikipedia where a page that is not up to the
standards might be deleted.

(Not a contributor to OSM myself, but I have helped the French Drupal
community and cofounded the Museomix community. Also, I appreciate precise
data in OSM)

~~~
btilly
No. I am stating that OSM has no setup for, or desire to, accept useful but
incomplete data. And unless they do, they will not have data available that
other services have.

I know where Google, Bing, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, etc get phone numbers
and current business hours for our clients. They are straightforward for us to
work with, and we are happy to give it to them. OSM is not easy to work with
us, so don't get that data.

OSM has a choice. Be easy to work with, or have limited data. OSM has chosen
to be hard to work with. That is a valid choice, but then you have to live
with the result.

~~~
maxerickson
alltheplaces is almost what you are looking for.

[https://github.com/alltheplaces/alltheplaces](https://github.com/alltheplaces/alltheplaces)

I guess you'd be looking to bypass the hard part.

~~~
btilly
No, that's the opposite of what we are looking for. We're not looking for data
that other people have uploaded. We've got that data straight from the
companies before it is publicly announced. We're publishing it to everywhere
the companies want it published to.

OSM is not one of the places that we want to deal with providing that data to.

~~~
maxerickson
If you hand alltheplaces your data, people ingesting alltheplaces will have
your data.

I was suggesting it as an alternative open distribution channel that was less
concerned with details.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Hello. I am the creator of alltheplaces and Max is absolutely correct.
Alltheplaces is a bunch of scrapers right now because it was the fastest way
to get the data, but if you have data in a machine readable format already
then I don't have to scrape it. I can just download your data file and
distribute it to whomever wants to use it (people interested in importing to
OSM, geocoders/search engines, etc.).

------
pornel
I've tried to build an open check-in app based on OSM data, and I've ran into
many of the problems mentioned in the article:

• Tags and relations are a total mess. There are many different and
overlapping schemes. There is obviously outdated/sub-standard data, but
automated fixes are forbidden. There are some neat tools to make sense of the
tag data, but ultimately I had to deal with all that mess and complexity on my
end.

• The lack of moderation or a way to officially act as an intermediary for
edits (other than clunky oAuth flow) meant I couldn't expose an Add/Edit/Fix
functionality for my users. Similarly, if I wanted to let my users upload a
photo of a venue, there was no service to store it, no identifier or tag to
associate it.

• The API returns only nodes entirely within an area, rather than everything
intersecting a given area. If you fetch small lat/long area, you won't get a
node for the country/city/district it's in, unless you stumble upon a point in
its border or label. That meant I couldn't fetch things from OSM API as
needed, and had to have my own copy of the data and the DB and custom search.

• The map looks ugly without buildings. There was free building data available
for areas I was interested in, but I was told to copy them by hand.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
> The API returns only nodes entirely within an area, rather than everything
> intersecting a given area.

The osm.org API is meant for editing. It's not a map rendering and querying
API. There are lots of alternatives for that.

> There was free building data available for areas I was interested in, but I
> was told to copy them by hand.

OSM is open to imported data. It just has to be done carefully because "with
great power comes great responsibility" \- add millions of items to the OSM
database and you can royally screw it up (there is an argument to say that
most of OSM's problems in the US stem from this). But there's a well
documented imports process and lots of people with experience in importing
buildings to help you through it.

~~~
laaph
Can you clarify which API I should be using for data access? My last project
involved determining locations parks and rivers, and I ran in to a lot of the
same problems. But, if I just want GPS coordinates, I'm not sure where else to
go. Mapbox is find for rendering but less so if I want the raw data and use it
myself (for a phone application for example).

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
The Overpass API should be the first call. Alternatively, you can download OSM
data and feed it into your own database, which gives you much more flexibility
to write the queries you want
([http://download.geofabrik.de/](http://download.geofabrik.de/) is a good
place to download the data for the area you want; osm2pgsql and Osmosis are
the two standard tools for loading OSM into a database, usually
Postgres/PostGIS, though there are others).

------
jimmyrocks
Thanks for posting this here! I feel like this is mostly good constructive
criticism.

I have given a few talks about using OSM data in the US government and it
comes down to authoritative data sources and validation. It's a great starting
point, but there needs to be another layer (or two) of validation before it
can be used at the enterprise level. The National Map Corps has some good
examples of how this can be implemented with data stewardship.

I am also working on a few projects to take public domain data and put it into
OSM. While it's useful and mostly open, it's definitely less open than the
original data sources. Another issues is that as soon as someone edits the
imported data, it will become less authoritative as well.

~~~
lucb1e
> it will become less authoritative

Or better than the authoritative original.

Like with Wikipedia, where you often hear that people prefer to cite a single
person as source (because "anyone could edit Wikipedia", as if no single
person can setup a website or write a paper), at least Wikipedia has had
thousands of reads and often dozens or hundreds of reviews. People are scared
of the idea "it could be anyone", while the most likely editor is just a peer
with good intentions.

~~~
jimmyrocks
In many (most?) cases it can be better than the authoritative sources. But
there is also the possibility for vandalism or sloppy work.

There are established ways to combat this (peer review, data stewards,
reputation scoring) and even OSM has a checkbox for further validation.

OSM will never fit every use case, but it's good to understand where it falls
short and can improve.

------
RosanaAnaDana
I've found that in terms of supporting any kind of additional analysis, OSM
data to be unreliable to the point of uselessness, which isn't to say there is
a better alternative. I think this quote from your article: "One of the most
significant technical problems with OSM is the lack of a review model, that is
for a change to the map to be staged and then reviewed before being applied.
Not having this functionality caused ripples of problems throughout the
system, some of which I'll discuss here." is the primary reason I can't
regularly use OSM data. Trust me when I say there are millions of instance
where having _reliable_ data regarding streets could save me time/ stress. Do
you have any thoughts on how to improve the quality of OSMaps? Conceptually, I
feel like the product is indispensable. In practice, I feel like the product
is utterly unusable.

~~~
emacsen
This was a hard post to make. OSM was a big part of my life for many years,
and I have friends in the project. I like my friends (even the ones I disagree
with).

But where OSM has failed most in my view (and maybe I need to add this to the
article) is that there are now free geographic datasets from local governments
and without the ability to integrate them into OSM easily, and then update
them (which we basically can't do), I fear OSM is going to ultimately fail at
its mission

~~~
toomuchtodo
Is this a technology issue? Or a funding issue?

~~~
maxerickson
It's frequently a licensing issue and then also a resources issue.

There's relatively generalized tools for diffing data against OSM and
outputting a change file, but lots of data is released using ambiguous or
slightly incompatible licensing.

One example is [http://blog.improve-osm.org/en/2018/01/new-features-and-
enha...](http://blog.improve-osm.org/en/2018/01/new-features-and-enhancements-
in-cygnus/)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Even Apple the most valuable company in the world with hundreds of billions of
dollars of cash on hand is way behind Google in terms of mapping.

[https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-
moat/](https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/)

If Apple has trouble keeping feature parity with Google Maps, there is no way
that an endeavor like Open Street Maps has any real chance of making something
with the breadth, features, and usability of Google Maps.

~~~
mtgx
The why doesn't Apple do what other companies and industries typically do in a
situation where there is one dominant player? Get everyone else to join a
_single open solution_ and then start attacking Google for not being open with
its maps.

Get Microsoft, Tom Tom, Samsung - everyone else - to work on OSM.

Right now, Apple is basically building the "Windows Phone" of map solutions,
because it "wants to be different", and making the same mistake Nokia did in
smartphones.

They should get over their own egos and actually choose the option with the
highest chance of success against Google Maps.

~~~
post_break
Because xkcd:927 It will never happen.

~~~
cooper12
If it's to their advantage, it will happen. See the AV1 codec, which Apple
joined along with other industry giants as an alternative to patent-encumbered
video codecs.

------
aspirin
Im my opinion the biggest problem is the data model (or lack of). Tags i.e.
key-value pairs are used to add properties to geometry. Mappers use different
combinations of keys/values to describe the same thing. The post touches on
this, but does not offer solutions other than adding "layers".

There should be a strict schema that would be community managed through some
process.

~~~
lucb1e
Like what, tag proposals where people vote yay or nay? We have those. As an
active mapper, I very rarely find two ways of tagging the same thing, so the
process seems to work fine.

And if you do find a situation where there are multiple options, it takes only
a quick check on taginfo to find the more commonly used one. If you go with
that, it should converge soon.

~~~
aspirin
Currently there is nothing to stop mappers using tags in wrong ways. It should
just be flat out impossible. If a field/tag isn't defined in the schema, it
could not be used. The range of values should be limited in the same way, too.

~~~
lucb1e
Ah, I see where you're going with this. It would slow innovation down to a
trickle, though. Anyone who wants to do something that's not yet standardized
would have to stash their edits somewhere and wait for official approval. And
that would likely take weeks or months at best. Currently, the best idea wins
automatically because good ideas are used by both mapping applications and
mappers.

Maybe something in the middle, like the current wiki system but with an
enforcement rule of whatever is on the wiki. Anyone could freely edit it
because it's a wiki (adding allowed options, and removing/changing any that
have extremely few uses (zero, or perhaps a few which are then removed)), but
at least there is a correct spec.

If people really had to adhere to a strict, slow-moving standard with pre-
approval, the spec would also become extremely complex and very difficult to
implement, because the spec-makers will want to think of every eventuality.
See any other large specification ever, like HTML or something. I can't see
that ending well. I think a hybrid system might be better than a strict one,
given the choice between those two.

I like thinking about it though! Always good to have hear ideas.

------
NelsonMinar
This is an extremely thoughtful and constructive post. Thanks to Serge for
making it.

I looked closely at getting deeply involved with OSM a few years back. And
bounced off hard because the community is infested with assholes. There's a
lot of very rude people who are active on the mailing lists that set the
culture. It made me uninterested in trying to work through those cultural
problems to improve the technical project. I'm not alone in this feeling.

------
tomkinson
Thank you for your contributions and writing this. Just spent a week of
development time 'fixing' Nomination reverse geo-code issues and creating a
pay for RGC backup because we exceeded the 1per sec max and had NO idea when
it would turn back on. To boot, no help whatsoever determining why when we
used it successfully for over a year. All of a sudden NOPE, we're cut off with
foggy reasoning and no explanation of why or when we'll be back up. I've spent
several months on maps. All of them. I know them through and through. I could
sleep speak API docs and pricing for mapping services. We need OSM. OSM needs
many of these 'fixes'. ASAP. No idea who was running things there. You gotta
work on your analogies ;), but yeah if a user doesn't know how much the total
usage is and can only use a percentage of that unknown total, it's ridiculous.
Let's get a premium account going at resonable rates. Same for reverse
geocode. No more than a 1ps max. Ok so what if we have a surge. Error 3. Give
me a break. And so brashly the docs state this almost warning deterring any
user from ever wanting to integrate because there is a big ol' flag saying 'we
DO NOT want to scale with you!' At a bare minimum how about you average per
second rates over a 10min aggregate. Soooo much room for overhaul and
improvement here. This is a big start. Number one on HN! Let's fix/upgrade the
antiquated OSM tech, logic and direction. It's a new world and the world needs
OSM.

~~~
rmc
You can install Nominatim om your own hardware and then make as many queries
as you want. There are also companies offering hosted Nominatim (e.g.
geofabrik), which will come with a limit and a way to see how much you have
used.

------
gpsx
Previously I really like the flexibility of the tagging system in open street
map. I used something like it for a unrelated commercial product and we have
found we have to switch away from it. And we had very tight control over the
definitions of the tagging we were using.

The tools were difficult, as is mentioned in the main post. That is certainly
an inconvenience but I figured we could muddle through that. The bigger
problem is that the customers just never got it. They wanted a single,
authoritative classification for an object.

Our plan is to move to a system inspired by the model used in BIM for
classification. The princicple difference is that in open street map all data
identifying an object has to lie within the tags. In the alternate system, a
single identifier for the object type is used, and this references external
metadata that gives you additional information which does not have to be
embedded in the tags on the object. An example of additional information held
external to the map and tags is that a bathroom is a type of room. I don't
have to include in the map data that the object is both a bathroom and a room.

I should add, the external meta data also gives a strict definition of what
types of tags (and maybe values) are allowed on the given type of object. If
you need something a little different, you can make a new type.

I am not sure how well this type of system could work in open street map. Is
it too rigid? Or would there be too much proliferation of types?
Classification is always hard and I am not sure people have solved that
problem in any large context.

And of course, changes like this would mean a new database. If people ever do
think about making an OSM 2.0 maybe this, or another tagging alternative, is
something to consider.

(edit: typos)

~~~
pbowyer
I like the sound of this, like an object graph of data from OSM.

> I am not sure how well this type of system could work in open street map. Is
> it too rigid? Or would there be too much proliferation of types?
> Classification is always hard and I am not sure people have solved that
> problem in any large context.

Ontologies are well-researched. Unfortunately they're not my area of expertise
as I turned away from doing a PhD in them and went into business.

I have been playing with a controlled vocabulary since Christmas for a
personal project and the complexity of definition has made me think this is
why Google et al have gone for a more flexible, machine-learned typing, and
why the types for schema.org are so broad.

Having been negative, I think this is exactly what OSM needs to organise the
world's objects.

------
duozerk
_OSM gives people the tools to create their own map rather than offering them
a simple, out of the box solution_

On this point and the main part of the first argument, I kinda disagree; the
OSM project should specifically aim to do that: providing means for one to
create a service.

However, providing an actual map service would cost much, much more in
bandwidth and I doubt a free software project like this has that kind of funds
- actually serving tiles can add up to large costs pretty fast if enough
people use the service.

So if you want an actual service, you either do the hosting yourself or go see
mapbox/whatever.

~~~
Avamander
Time to move away from awful raster maps and to vector maps?

~~~
sydd
There are some, e.g. OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow. I wonder why no
one has written a proper, fast Opengl renderer for osm

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
They have. It’s called Mapbox GL, it’s fully open source and there’s a whole
open source ecosystem around it.

~~~
sorenjan
Are there any sites where you can use it with current data? As far as I know
Mapbox only sells it as a service to other companies, they don't have a site
where users can browse it. The only site I know that use Mapbox is Strava, and
they (or Mapbox) are slow to update the data. I made edits months ago that
aren't available yet. Still, the data is much better than Google's for runners
and cyclists.

------
just_testing
I'm also interested in the development of OSM (being an editor and a data
consumer) and I've witnessed first hand some of your issues. For instance,
once I've had to create my own "geocoder" for transit fines in São Paulo using
OSM data, because no geocoder commercially available would be able to deal
with the data.

So, now that we clarified I'm not a troll, nor a bot, I ask you: how should we
deal with those issues? Join en masse the OSMF so we can vote for a change?
Begin the "New-OSM-But-Better Foundation"?

I also think having layers (particularly, layers vouched by governments) would
be awesome. I saw several governmental branches in Brazil wanting to be more
integrated with OSM - this would allow them to stay "inside" OSM (and being an
accredited citizen), instead of creating their own silos, importing data from
time to time.

~~~
emacsen
Honestly, I have no idea.

------
tobltobs
I can understand the frustration of OSM users that they have to create their
own maps, but providing free tile servers would never be possible with the
restricted funding for OSM.

------
ris
FWIW I don't really think any of these problems are "new" and don't think OSM
is truly in any more trouble than it's ever been. And as many tensions as
there obviously are in OSM, it hasn't stopped us getting pretty damn far. And
if anyone thinks that OSM may be stagnating I would suggest getting involved
in improving their local area (it's not hard!) and I think they will quickly
find out for themselves.

------
qwerty456127
IMHO internet projects, especially free data-centric projects shold just be
made as granular as possible. There should be a project to maintain the actual
data base and independent projects to display and integrate this data. And as
far as I know this is how it actually is in the world of OSM though the actual
projects are not being developed and marketed actively enough. I may be wrong
- I have never really used OSM (I prefer the proprietary map project native to
the country I live in - it does the local job much better than both OSM and
Google), just read about it a number of times.

------
sorenjan
One thing that made me a bit nervous to start editing is the lack of an easy
way to roll back changes, at least I couldn't find one using the iD editor. If
I make a mistake and save it I need to do new edits to try and fix it,
possibly making things worse, instead of just removing the entire changeset. I
had some issues with multipolygons and had to edit the same things maybe four
or five times before I got it right.

And why isn't the Strava heatmap easier to use? They allow OpenStreetMap to
use the heatmap for tracing [1], but doing so in the iD editor requires you to
copy a long url from the wiki and use a custom layer. This only shows the
heatmap, no aerial photos or other mapping data, and it disappears when zoomed
in too much.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/V4Tn96F.png](https://i.imgur.com/V4Tn96F.png)

[1]
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava#Data_Permission_-...](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava#Data_Permission_-
_Allowed_for_tracing.21)

~~~
bhousel
Hey sorenjan - The OSM Wiki is not correct. We've received no license from
Strava that allows tracing outside of their iD fork.

Current progress on securing permission to use the heatmap for OSM tracing is
happening here: [https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-
index/pull/373](https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index/pull/373)

~~~
sorenjan
Ok, good to know. It seems mostly academic though, since using their iD fork
with the slide add-on [0] is a better user experience, and someone from Strava
mentions in the Github issue that it's approved internally. Of course I'm no
lawyer and I understand that proper licensing is important, I'll just use
their fork for now when tracing their heatmap.

I see that you're the iD maintainer, are there any plans on adding the slide
functionality? Or b-splines which could get tessellated client side before
saving to the database? I can take this opportunity to thank you and the other
contributors, I probably wouldn't edit OSM if it weren't for iD.

[0] [https://labs.strava.com/slide/](https://labs.strava.com/slide/)

------
donpdonp
This was a wonderful post, thanks for the honesty and detail, emacsen.

What I'd like to see as far as a technical overhaul, is reimagining the entire
thing as a 3D dataset. Needing to model a paper map is no longer the goal,
modeling space in 3 dimentions seems to be the more exciting/useful way
forward.

I'd like to have a model of my town in 3D, either at mostly manual low-poly
resolution (aka minecraft) thats done by hand, or (though much more data
intensive) with point cloud/lidar data.

Web pages can receive the 3d data and render a 2d model, or the server can
project 3d onto 2d tiles before delivery.

------
reaperducer
He's not wrong.

OSM is too complex for the majority of businesses. I know two that chose to
pay Google for their mapping needs rather than jump through OSM's hoops.

Imagine if the only way to get Linux on your computer was to download and
compile the whole thing from source yourself, instead of buying or downloading
a distro.

If OSM had a mapping solution like Google's, it would thrive. And just for
fun, it should undercut Google's pricing.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
> If OSM had a mapping solution like Google's, it would thrive.

It does, it’s called Mapbox.

Plus a number of excellent smaller providers - Thunderforest, Geofabrik,
Graphhopper etc.

~~~
beering
And kind of like Linux, you have a patchwork of unsatisfying solutions.

Mapbox isn't always cheaper than Google. They have not lowered their tile
prices in years, for example. And on geocoding and some other APIs they give
out poor results compared to Google. Do they have competition? Cloudmade went
in some car-related direction. Mapzen never managed to have a real business
plan.

And your "excellent small providers"? Yeah, Andy may be able to create some
bespoke solution for you if he has time, and Geofabrik can wrangle some host-
it-yourself setup onto AWS, but it's still very true that OSM themselves don't
have a good story on a lot of mapping needs. You can either browse their web
map with unusable search or download the 38GB database, and that's about it.
No wonder many businesses just pay Google rather than dive into the rabbit
hole of OSM.

------
jokoon
I believe that OSM should deliver data, and not a service because it's
extremely data-demanding.

Although I have to say that since OSM offers data, they could make an effort
into providing good exports of that data, with better segmentation and choice
of format. You should not have to download planet.osm or use some overpass
API. The choices are very limited, and offering data through XML is
insufficient.

------
madez
I would love to mirror OSM including all the data, the rendering and the
website. Is there a way to do that?

I can get the data[0], but is there some guide or container image that
includes all the rest that is needed in a working condition?

[0]
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm)

~~~
maxerickson
There's some guides for setting up tile rendering at
[https://switch2osm.org/](https://switch2osm.org/)

It doesn't entirely make sense to mirror the editing api, unless you want to
fork OSM. And I guess a lot of the user data isn't really readily available.

If your goal is to help the project you might consider running a tile node
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Servers/Tile_CDN](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Servers/Tile_CDN)

------
altitudinous
That is tl;dr

I got criticised when I was a young coder for writing long rambling emails and
articles. Now I am older I see why. Too much info in the world, I don't have
time to read that although I am interested in why this person thinks
openstreetmap is in trouble, but man a wall of text. This is why scientific
articles have extracts at the top, bulletpoints work well too.

------
MonkeyDan
I wouldn't mind seeing a two-tier approach, with authoritative municipal data
as a base (see [https://openaddresses.io/](https://openaddresses.io/) for an
example of collecting a large number of sources and normalizing it) with user-
submitted edits on top.

------
nottorp
I attempted to do an offline map with OSM/Mapbox/etc. I found out that it's a
major bother even if you're willing to pay someone for the data.

Project got canceled so I don't have a final opinion, but i'll avoid OSM next
time...

~~~
6487698hhhh
We use Esri for rendering vector tiles and it works well.

------
ultim8k
I personally believe that world needs a "wikipedia" for maps, not another hard
to understand tool or technology. Yes. Technology matters of course, but not
everyone is an engineer or entrepreneur.

------
IntronExon
Re: the issues with moderation, I sometimes wonder if Wikipedia were trying to
start from scratch in the last few years... would it work? With all of the
trolls and bots, easy access it might have died hard and early.

 _One of the most significant technical problems with OSM is the lack of a
review model, that is for a change to the map to be staged and then reviewed
before being applied. Not having this functionality caused ripples of problems
throughout the system, some of which I 'll discuss here._

Moderation is expensive, and Wikipedia got by initially with a pretty minimal
degree of it, then ramped up as they got bigger. What if they’d been slammed
by modern trolling at the start?

~~~
emacsen
It's an interesting question of how much flexibility you give people at the
beginning vs as a project matures, but I'm looking at the situation with OSM
pragmatically, that is to say "What OSM needs to do now", rather than "What
they should have done".

The problem of both bad edits and vandalism are very large (much like Google
Mapmaker) and other measures we've put in place, such as changeset comments
(which I helped develop) and vandalism tools don't seem to cut it.

~~~
RosanaAnaDana
What about some kind of automated approach to validation? A major difference
between OSM data and something like wikipedia is that, unlike wikipedia, at
least some of the OSM data verifiable. A street somewhere, __does __exist, in
a particular spot. There must be some way to croudsource validation.

~~~
spectre256
Ultimately it comes down to the resources to create such a thing, right? There
have been some successes with crowdsourced validations such as Facebook's
translation efforts (although I think in that case it was merely a component
of the process). And it would rely on a volume of edits that OSM may not have.
There may be 1000 people ready to verify the location of the Statue of
Liberty, but probably not the location of every building in a remote area
being mapped for HOT.

Mapbox has built the start of a validation framework, and they have done very
cool stuff. Of course then they get criticized for "forking" OSM. There are
definitely valid criticisms there, but it seems like there's no way to win.

------
amygdyl
Is there a real hurdle in patents on map graphics held by the major mapping
companies and national organisations?

Could a goal of being truly open and complete, be incompatible with the
interests of privacy, national security even?

If community involvement is lacking, I immediately thought about the cimnunies
who have real interest in mapping and particularly free open mapping, such as
conservationists, residents of small towns concerned about planning and in my
home Sussex county, hikers always fighting losing out to farming interests
over ancient byways.

But these constituencies need tools. I would immediately donate to such
efforts if I knew they existed. Or a corporate like ACDSystems, who publish
Deneba Canvas which while sadly lost adrift far from the software I remember,
incorporated superb GIS and technical drawing capabilities. This would be the
kind of marketing that traditionally worked very well, tools and support for
local news stories, which use to run a long while anyway.

------
aluhut
CTRL+F street complete

Nothing. Even though you've commented on my post. Guess, it would have got in
the way of the flow of negativity. Same goes for maps.me.

~~~
rspeer
This sounds like it was meant as some kind of direct message to emacsen. Do
you want to explain to anyone else what you mean?

~~~
aluhut
He already commented recently under a repost of his former article. I've
pointed out the good things about OSM.

He proceeded with answering to my comment but completely ignoring the content
of it while advertising this piece to come. I'm still unable to find those
good things in this article which supports my theory of overdrawn and
almost(?) total negativity and ignorance of the good aspects of OSM.

------
WhitneyLand
contact email below

~~~
emacsen
You can email me at emacsen at emacsen dot net

