Ten years of OpenStreetMap (O'Reilly Radar)
Ten years of OpenStreetMap (O'Reilly Radar)
O'Reilly Radar has posted a retrospective
look at the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project on the occasion of OSM's
ten-year anniversary. Tyler Bell calls the project "the most
significant development in the Open Geo Data movement
" outside
of GPS; noting that before OSM's creation, "map data sources
were few, and largely controlled by a small collection of private and
governmental players. The scarcity of map data ensured that it
remained both expensive and highly restrictive, and no one but the
largest navigation companies could use map data.
" Particularly
interesting are the various comparisons between the state of
the map in 2007 and today; the project's 1.5 million registered users
do not seem to be slowing down, even if today's emphasis has shifted
somewhat to less-visible features: "nodes are getting connected
and turn restrictions added to facilitate navigation, while addresses
are being sourced to help with geocoding and place finding.
"