Furry Technologists

1307 readers

1 users here now

Science, Technology, and pawbs

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Overture maps is an open standard for Maps apps to compete with Google and Apple. (overturemaps.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Super cool, there should be more competition between Map providers like Apple/Google/OpenStreetMaps.

Why couldn’t this project have just been things being added to OSM?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My thought exactly -- why not contribute to OpenStreetMap?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Steering members: Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, TomTom. They won't contribute to OSM because they don't want map data to be free for everyone; they just don't like Google and Apple being in charge of it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So they actually are contributing / complementing OSM:

Overture is a data-centric map project, not a community of individual map editors. Therefore, Overture is intended to be complementary to OSM. We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets. Overture data will be available for use by the OpenStreetMap community under compatible open data licenses. Overture members are encouraged to contribute to OSM directly.

From the FAQs on their site.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aha, I see that now, too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It’s kinda funny; everywhere I saw this posted had the same initial comments, “what about OSM?” Which I think is natural and good skepticism.

Hopefully, they keep true to their word instead of creating the same problem.