OpenStreetMap Blog

Dropbox: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/why-dropbox-decided-to-drop-aws-and-build-its-own-infrastructure-and-network/

Github: https://githubengineering.com/evolution-of-our-data-centers/

Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/our-secret-data-center/

Twitter: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure/2017/the-infrastructure-behind-twitter-scale.html

LinkedIn: http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design-build/how-linkedins-data-centers-grew-up/99215.fullarticle

FastMail: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html

Stack Overflow: http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/7/21/stackoverflow-update-560m-pageviews-a-month-25-servers-and-i.html

Wikipedia: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers

OpenStreetMap: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/tag/infrastructure/

The Internet Archive: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/16/head_like_a_memory_hole/

Gitlab tried, but didn't have the necessary in-house experience before they made the attempt: https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/02/why-we-are-not-leaving-the-cloud/

Instagram was migrated from AWS onto Facebook's infrastructure: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/facebook-instagram/

WhatsApp was migrated from IBM to Facebook infrastructure: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/07/facebook-planning-to-move-whatsapp-off-ibms-public-cloud.html

Hacker News and Pinboard (acq. Delicious) run on a single server.

It's not hard, but you do need to know what you're doing and have resources to…

It means nothing except that there will be more contributors and/because OSM data will make it into more projects.

OSM might also feel more pressure to standardize things like tags for features, which would resolve a considerable problem in using OSM data. Both tag names and value formats vary from region to region, and that's probably why almost any proprietary maps software is more useful than OSM apps. Having personally had to use OSM data, writing heuristics to parse tag names and values is a lot of work.

As for criticism of Overture on OSM community forums, there seems to be a lot of vague gesturing at "big tech bad, OSM community good." A more constructive place to look for what Overture means for OSM is the OSM Foundation's blog/press statement - https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2022/12/22/views-from-the-openstreetmap-foundation-on-the-launch-of-overture/. Which, to my mind, reads as saying that OSM data is free to use for corporations, but OSM hopes that Overture improvements flow upstream.

If my tone seems a bit negative, it's because I'm a bit tired of the negative reaction open source communities tend to have when being challenged or offered a collaboration opportunity with big tech. I feel like the approach Blender takes with big tech (like NVIDIA) is much, much more productive.

> While routing works well on OSM, the POI layer and the address layer (important for geocoding) still needs a fair bit of work, at least in the US.

OSM is built from the contributions of hundreds of thousands of individuals mapping their local area, and it would be great if you wanted to help them with that work!

If you're wondering how to get started, these guides might be helpful:

http://learnosm.org/en/
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide

Or, jump right in and sign up for OSM:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/new

If you don't feel like signing up, you can simply add "notes" for OSM members to check out places where the map isn't accurate:

https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/04/29/openstreetmap-opens-up-to-more-contributors-with-easy-add-a-note-feature/

Once you've mapped your local area and are looking for something else to help out with, these tools are a great way to find other problems to fix:

http://maproulette.org/
http://keepright.at/

Reminds me of the 100 millionth OpenStreetMap changeset (commit). A few people, myself included, were casually trying for it but in the end it went to someone who wasn't trying and just busy mapping Africa! Much more wholesome, seeing it with hindsight. This person was also previously nominated for an OSM award. I guess it helps that openstreetmap doesn't really allow for creating crap, because it's all live in production, and that's how the Nth commit is way more likely to be someone's random whim? Either way, a fun achievement for Github :)

In case anyone cares to read more about the OSM milestone, the official blog entry: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2021/02/25/100-million-edits-to-openstreetmap/ My write-up of changeset activity around the event: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/LucGommans/diary/395954

Does that "build-upon" clause also apply for the case where a provider is mixing OSM data with other third-party licensed map data ? For example, it is mentioned/known that Apple makes some use of OSM data[1] to improve their maps in some places. Are they then legally obliged to release the full data behind their maps for those regions?

If so, that's very nice but I am not sure that's what is actually happening: the third-party source whom they are licensing data from is unlikely to be happy with a scenario where their data ends up in the public domain as this considerably reduces the commercial value of their map data.

[1] - https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2012/10/02/apple-maps/

Examples, please. There is bad info here and there, but it's minority (if you want 100% accuracy it's delusional, even Google Maps has a ton of crap, starting from skylights that AI recognized as buildings [3] to businesses you can't even tell they exist).

Also, for a long time now each changeset can be discussed. [1]

I have a hunch you may be from a country where the community has not took up too much [2]. These tend to have more dubious data.

[1] https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2014/11/02/introducing-changeset-discussions/

[2] https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries

[3] https://goo.gl/maps/knpT8eRR4YhB6Sm86 - look at the shopping mall in satellite and map view