Since getting into geospatial modelling a few years ago, my appreciation for the OSM ecosystem has skyrocketted. I honestly think it should be up there with Wikipedia as one of the great crowd-sourced triumphs of our age.
(but sad I can't afford to come chill at an in-person conference, as much as I keep meaning to go meet my local OSM chapter!)
> it should be up there with Wikipedia as one of the great crowd-sourced triumphs of our age
Yes, its an incredible and inspiring duo. But OSM is in sense extra important: it shows wikipedia was not a fluke. In a better world far more resources would be dedicate for this type of digital commons.
The second way in which OSM is special is that it is a very tangible, physical facts-focused database that avoids some of the frictions and conflicts of interpretation in Wikipedia.
Given the downhill direction of public discourse these days I wonder if Wikipedia were to be launched today, would it have any chance?
The OSM chapter in my own town was organized by a startup that provided map-related solutions. When that startup got acquired and its employees were all transferred to the parent corporation’s office several countries over, the chapter sadly disappeared overnight. I miss it.
They moved from a small Eastern European city to a Western European one that was popular with hipsters, and they got a significant pay rise. None of them were displeased about it, and the ones I am still in contact with are happy there and do not intend to move back.
Can anyone brief me on the current situation and prospects of OpenStreetMap?
For instance, the other day I was looking for a functionality to upload photos (with their coordinates from EXIF) from various places, but it was impossible. In general, contributing to the project seemed all too complicated for others than diehard devotees.
OpenStreetMap does not store photos. There are other services for that, they build upon OSM and even recognize features such as street signs in photos so they can be easily added to the map.
Regarding ease of contribution... I knew exactly nothing about mapping a few months ago. I saw the recent OSM birthday news and decided I should start contributing. Someone here on HN recommended Street Complete so I just downloaded that. It was really easy to contribute data using that app, it asks you stuff and you just add the missing information or confirm that it's correct. Added lots of local information for my city and neghborhood.
Eventually I noticed some roads were wrong and downloaded Vespucci to fix them. Turned out to be surprisingly easy once I learned about ways. Just pick up a few dots and move them, maybe add some new dots. Then I figured I should probably add my house to the map. Then why not add my neighbors as well? Wait, I'm using the satellite imagery as a reference to trace the buildings. Are the streets even aligned with the images to begin with? I figure I should get some GPS traces to verify. Wow, I always thought GPS and its 3 meter precision were impressive but it's actually not good enough for this purpose. Looks like I can set up a differential GPS system with a base station at a precisely known position, what a cool project. Expensive though. Oh look, new Android phones provide access to raw GPS pseudoranges which is just what I need to differentiate GPS fixes. They even have L5 GPS, sweet. I should try making an app for that when my new phone arrives. Maybe I can repurpose my old one into a GPS base station so I can compute GPS traces with centimeter precision. Meanwhile, I'll just average the results with JOSM. Man, JOSM is such a nice editor. Free software, works on Linux. I should learn all of its features.
I found EveryDoor a bit easier to use on mobile than Vespucci, at least for small edits.
Now, you piqued my curiosity with your mention of newer Android phones. Are they RTK-capable? Do you have a few good references on that? There are collaborative RTK networks such as https://centipede.fr/ which could be very useful in combination with that.
I saw EveryDoor mentioned in the OSM wiki but never tried it out. Says it's useful for micromapping which is certainly something I would enjoy.
Androids version 10 and above have support for raw GNSS measurements, they provide access to the pseudoranges and lots more. They suddenly became the most convenient platform for accessing raw GNSS data given the proprietary mess that is the GNSS receiver market. We can also turn off the battery saving GNSS chipset duty cycling and have it continuously track the satellites, improving accuracy.
Right now there seems to be no Android RTK app but I want to try making one. Perhaps I can post process the GPS traces if I can't achieve real time.
Resources I've found and collected on the subject:
OSM is very tightly focused. It’s a factual geodatabase. Nothing else. No reviews, no photos, no StreetView, no consumer-facing navigation app, no “host your own data” a la Google My Maps, no public transport timetables. Just street, landuse and other map data. The principle is that others can then take that data and build on it - and they do!
It does have some timetables. There are opening hours for your local barber,but also for a beach, national park, and for roads, gates etc. There are timetables for ferries, elevators, etc. Most often only "the ferry is running between 06:30 and 22:15”, but sometimes actually timetables. Eg. "The bridge opens every hour during weekdays and every two hours in the weekends".
So not if your bus or tram is leaving in two minutes, but many other time tables are there.
The notation is horrible though. It's a hodgepodge DSL, that's almost a programming language crammed into a text field.
OSM's database doesn't store photos so you might have looked for a functionality which never existed. What was your usecase? There's https://kartaview.org/ , https://mapilio.com/ and https://www.mapillary.com/ (the latter acquired by Facebook) who collect geo-referenced photos.
As other posters have mentioned, you misunderstand OSM. Geotagged photos go on Mapillary, for example, where they can be used to improve OSM, but not on OSM itself.
But contributing to OSM is definitely not inherently complicated: the StreetComplete app has been around for years and lets any ordinary phone owner add details with just a few taps, in an environment much like a computer game. It is true that powerful editors like JOSM or Vespucci have a steeper learning curve, but since changes to OSM immediately go live and e.g. deleting a highway by mistake would be bad, you want some level of friction.
As a casual who has contributed, it's not that hard. I do agree that I wish they had certain features that they currently don't. What was your ultimate objective?
(but sad I can't afford to come chill at an in-person conference, as much as I keep meaning to go meet my local OSM chapter!)