Marcus Adams

#Meta, #Microsoft, and #Amazon have launched their open-source mapping project

In other words, big tech reinvents #OpenStreeMaps so they can control something with the words "open source" in the description.

And to make matters worse, Bing Maps and other products pulled a lot of their data from Open Street Maps in the first place. I have contributed a bit to OSM, but will not be contributing to Overture.

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#OvertureMaps

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808274/meta-microsoft-amazon-overture-open-source-mapping

Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon have launched their open-source mapping project

The Overture Maps Foundation created by Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and TomTom released its first open-source dataset with global mapping information to take on Apple and Google.

The Verge
Jul 26, 2023 at 10:49pmWeb
Show threadMarcus AdamsJul 26, 2023

Maybe I'm wrong, but this really seems like one of those instances where a big tech company (or in this case several) took something open source that already existed, collected everything of value that they could, then re-branded and re-packaged it under their name.

It's reminiscent of the old Microsoft stance of "Embrace, extend, extinguish", except in the case of OSM, they've largely skipped the "extend" part and just went straight for extinguish.

:END:

Show threadberJul 26, 2023
@gerowen How would one even contribute to Overture (like OSM or maybe GoogleMaps)? Is this even possible?
Show threadMarcus AdamsJul 26, 2023
@ber Since it was just unveiled I'm not sure, but if they're calling it "open source", that to me says that normal users will be able to contribute, eventually at least. I'm gonna go some more digging and see if the folks at OSM have said anything about this yet.