OpenStreetMap?

[Paul Szymkowiak]

The idea of creating a map for maker/ hacker resources in Australia came up recently as part of the annual linux conference in Australia http://linux.conf.au, including the nice idea of being able to use the data to generate localised and stylised posters.

During that thread, and driven in part by a visit from Tim Berner's Lee, the topic of OpenStreetMap came up:

  http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Has this project considered OpenStreetMap as an alternative platform to Google Maps?

Any thoughts/ conclusions?

The general feeling here during the Linux Conf discussions was that OpenStreetMap would be a better philosophical choice for an open, commons, mapping project for maker/ hacker spaces.

That lead to various discussion of the implications and concerns around Google Map's policy on data, such as this kind of comment:

"The license Google users grant to Google is notionally for the 'limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones' but it is somewhat open ended in that Google could develop new services or modify existing ones that require your data to be used in ways you couldn’t have anticipated when signing up. This is fairly similar to Microsoft’s Services Agreement which also uses one license for all its services."

And similar concerns to those expressed in this news article:

  http://readwrite.com/2012/03/20/world_bank_distances_itself_from_closed_google_map

Cheers,

Paul

Paul Szymkowiak

[Renee DiResta]

We had thought of OpenStreetMap and would have liked to go that route; the fact that this started as a hacknight project meant that we chose things that we could spin up quickly. Currently the data is stored in a Google fusion table, which takes addresses from a Google form, and automatically does the geocoding and pushes out a Google map. Whatever you may think of them, Google makes free things that usually play together nicely. :)  It was the best solution for the MVP. If you have a group of people who would like to do the work to make the switch, we're happy to have everyone weigh in on going that route. 

[sk53...@gmail.com]

As an active OpenStreetMap contributor and an OpenSource enthusiast I must say I am disappointed about the choice of using Google technology. (For a general comparison between underlying geodata: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Map_Maker

Hack and Maker spaces have been mapped on OSM for some time. See these linkshttp://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/3680/how-can-i-add-a-hackspace-to-the-map, and a worldwide map of already mapped spaces: http://www.technomancy.org/osm-hackerspaces/.

OpenLayer or Leaflet apps to display stuff on a slippy map are pretty easy to create and serve from apache and can use any underlying map provider (Google, OSM, Bing etc). See, for instance, http://blog.allanglen.com/2011/03/displaying-google-fusion-tables-map-tiles-in-openlayers.

One simple way which this can be done is by making the underlying data held in the Google fusion table compatible with the OSM OdBL license. The data can then be imported into OSM. However, if you use Google geocoding this is a big NO-NO: the data is then not truly open. I've had a quick look at the hackerspace wiki table too, but cannot find any attribution, copyright information associated with this.

Cheers,

Jerry Clough
SK53 on OpenStreetMap