Which street-level image service do you commit to and why? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 10 months ago by Showroom7561@lemmy.ca to c/openstreetmap@lemmy.ml

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It seems pretty clear that street-level imaging on OSM is pretty lacking, unless you only want to see highways.

I'm looking to start mapping street-level images for my city, but it seems like there are three players (integrated in the OSM editor), and I don't know which to commit to:

-KartaView

-Mapillary

-mapilio

My gut is to go with the one with the largest user base (Mapillary), but they are owned by Facebook and who knows what direction they will take in the future or what our images will actually be used for in the long-run.

Karta seems dead.

And Mapilio seems like a knock-off of Mapillary, but with a much smaller user base and an uncertain future.

Are any worth investing hundreds of hours of time to?

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

[-] taladar@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago

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.

[-] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 8 points 10 months ago

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

[-] Thibaultmol@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago

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...

[-] CowsLookLikeMaps@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

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.

[-] Thibaultmol@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago

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)

this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023

18 points (95.0% liked)

OpenStreetMap community

3688 readers

99 users here now

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.

There are many communication channels about OSM, many organized around a certain country or region. Discover them on https://openstreetmap.community

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.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

Ben_on_Lemmy@lemmy.ml