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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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OpenStreetMap community
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Everything #OpenStreetMap related is welcome: software releases, showing of your work, questions about how to tag something, as long as it has to do with OpenStreetMap or OpenStreetMap-related software.
OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.
Join OpenStreetMap and start mapping: https://www.openstreetmap.org.
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https://mapcomplete.osm.be is an easy-to-use website to view, edit and add points (such as shops, restaurants and others)
https://learnosm.org/en/ has a lot of information for beginners too.
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Presumably this is meant to avoid using Google Streetmaps? The concept of using something Facebook/Meta-owned instead of Google makes no sense to me in this context since Google is okay in terms of quality and shares all the major downsides with Facebook/Meta.
It's about the licensing (I believe). Google doesn't allow you to use their images for other mapping services, while the other ones do.
That's why I'd like to at least make these images available to other mappers.
On a privacy front, both are horrible companies. LOL
Google Maps: you have to pay to use their images
Mapillary: sure it's Facebook BUT all the images are just regular CC-BY-SA license.. so you can do the normal CC-BY-SA things you want with them... including downloading them and hosting them somewhere else even.
Sure Facebook is evil, but in this department that's not a problem...
One big benefit of having street-level images is that it makes mapping much easier. In terms of company ownership, yeah they're both not great companies. However, I'd rather have two evil companies competing than one evil company with a monopoly.
And keep in mind: it's two evil companies BUT the images they're hosting are all CC-BY-SA licensed. So you can do a bunch of things with them and none of those companies can/will stop you.
I think this is different from the usual "big evil company bad, locking users in" mentality that we have around a lot of things like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc....
Atleast here the 'content' is open and available to use.
(I still think it's good to have our own servers, fyi)