While I think it's quite messed up that a company as rich as Apple can't abide putting credits for people who have put some really good work in (I've even made small updates to OSM in my time) I do think that this is a very classy move by the OSM people, no ranting blog post or 'Apple stole our stuff', welcoming people presents a much better image of the project.
If you look in the settings of applications like Pages you'll see a section named Contributions, they list opensource projects they use even for those whose license does not require to be mentioned.
While I'm agree with you that credits must be given where it is due, stretching it to the fact that this behavior would be in their DNA seems not backed up by facts in my point of view.
Really? The same Jobs who asked Stallman personally about whether or not Next's modifications to Objective C would need to be contributed back, and who then made sure they were contributed?
If Steve Jobs were still alive, he'd probably be pledging to deplete every last dollar of Apple's billions to run this stolen product into the ground. Who does OpenStreetMap think they are, anyway?
After making this comment I've come back to my 'comments' page from time to time and watched its karma value gyrate between positive and negative.
Do the down-mods represent people operating in good faith thinking I'm being mean-spirited, rude, and damaging the conversation? Or are they Apple fanboys upset by a little uncomfortable teasing at their expense? I can only speculate. :P
Personally, I just don't know what to make of your original comment, serious, or sarcastic, the clarity of what you are trying to get across just seems quite low.
Apples and Oranges. There are many web browsers. If you want a wiki map data, there is only OSM. Unless you have lots of money to licence other data, and can put up with their flaws (not as up to date as OSM, less detailed in some way etc.), OSM is the only horse in town.
This is great for OSM because it's starting to show how it's a real player, not just as as "open source map data", but "map data", i.e. it's competiting with the big, non-open source, map data providers now.
I think ElliotH knows that. His point is that OSM is probably going to be more effective publicly welcoming and reminding than throwing a hissyfit, even though they'd be justified in doing so.
It was for stealth. This does not absolve them of their legal and ethical responsibility to give credit where it's due, but it explains their actions above "they're dicks".
April 2010 is around when they would have started working on the maps back-end. Attribution would have meant dev releases would have indicated Apple using non-Google Maps data. They probably wanted to avoid that.
I noted in my original answer that "this does not absolve them of...responsibility".
Some of the comments were implying that Apple didn't give credit because they have a culture that is insolent. I was just trying to give context to the decision.
Sorry, reading and comprehension never was my strong suit. I just can't help but feel that by 'explaining' this behavior it is in some way condoning it. I see now that was not your intent.
It appears they've had these maps in their desktop products since about April 2010, so this explanation doesn't make any sense. (And if it did, then a simple switch to turn on attribution at launch time would have worked too).
