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
The article was a really good read! I liked this part, though as a user the licensing costs are hard(er) to imagine when the companies involved have the money (though maybe not in incentive?).
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, as I don’t think anyone puts anything past Facebook when it comes to making a profit.
I noted the same passage as well as the ensuing one which seems like such a sign of the times wrt corps absorbing open sourcerers ostensibly at a good rate …
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.
Update Feb 19 2021:
Inside the ‘Wikipedia of Maps,’ Tensions Grow Over Corporate Influence As Apple, Facebook, Amazon and other private companies play larger roles in OpenStreetMap, some volunteers worry that the open-source project is losing its way.
bloomberg com/news/articles/2021-02-19/openstreetmap-charts-a-controversial-new-direction
