OSM doesn't have a server per se (other than the OSM API server). It's a dataset for the most part. Headway lets you bring up a server that will render maps tiles, allows you to search for places and get routes between places. It's trying to be a user-friendly UI for various pieces of the OSM ecosystem. There are a lot of amazing pieces of software out there that work with OSM data, but there isn't an easy way to bring them up, and there's no unified frontend for all of them other than Headway (that I know of).
Edit: To the comments telling me I'm wrong about this, remember that Headway has a geocoder and routing system, along with a transit trip planner (currently disabled on maps.earth though). These are not things you could get with off-the-shelf solutions that include a GUI until now. I also want to self-host my mapping software for privacy reasons, and Headway makes that easy too. I probably need to be better about explaining what all Headway does that's different than just bringing up an OSM tileserver though. Thank you all for the feedback :)
There are services hosting OSM data, often times requiring paid API access for anything other than personal use.
OSM is amazing, for sure, but standing up even a small OSM service that only services a map in your local town/city/community is too daunting for most people (myself included).
Considering there are many other comments in this thread that mirror my main question, I would try and figure out messaging. Is it a particular tile rendering on top of OSM data? Is it trip heading information? Is it helping people stand up self hosted OSM servers? Is it helping with just a few components of that process? If so, which components? etc.
It's hard to know what the "value add" is here and a lot of this is my own ignorance on how the OSM ecosystem works but that's kind of what I would recommend trying to convey to people.
I wouldn't assume deep familiarity with OSM. I would like to hear more, especially concerning tools to help stand up a self hosted OSM server more easily, as I would suspect many other people would, but it would be nice to have some basics spelled out instead of assuming I have deep familiarity with the sprawling and intricate OSM ecosystem.
> tools to help stand up a self hosted OSM server more easily
I think that’s already the wrong way to think about it. For some reason that I do not comprehend, OSM comprises at least 3 different file formats, and 5 or 6 different ways to store that data.
When you ‘set up an OSM server’, what you really do is pick one of the storage methods, and then import the data with one of a variety of tools that were built over the years (and are probably compatible with only one or two of the storage methods each).
Seriously, the OSM ecosystem is a clusterfuck. Anyone that aims to standardize it into something easy to deploy has my full support.
To add onto this, those are raster tiles and the industry is moving away from raster tiles for a multitude of reasons. Headway doesn't bulk-download tiles from OSM, by default it takes an OSM extract from BBBike (with explicit permission) and brings up a server based on that. It generates vector tiles with planetiler and serves them with tileserver-gl-light. I've put a lot of thought into the way it all works in an effort to minimize load on the OSM ecosystem's infrastructure, provide attribution where required, etc.
I can promise you that there's no one-line replacement for the work I've done here unless you want to go out and pay for a closed-source product.
Note that the {s} part is for backwards compatibility, and that https://tile.openstreetmap.org is enough, or maybe even a tiny bit faster, now that we have http 2.
Edit: To the comments telling me I'm wrong about this, remember that Headway has a geocoder and routing system, along with a transit trip planner (currently disabled on maps.earth though). These are not things you could get with off-the-shelf solutions that include a GUI until now. I also want to self-host my mapping software for privacy reasons, and Headway makes that easy too. I probably need to be better about explaining what all Headway does that's different than just bringing up an OSM tileserver though. Thank you all for the feedback :)