It's not widely appreciated how efficient OSM is: the whole project runs on roughly $170k a year. Wikimedia spends around $65m (there are, obviously, many differences in what the organisations do, but it's an interesting comparison).
It's astonishing that a project like this runs on a budget similar to what it costs to get one (!) software engineer in the Valley. Well done to everyone involved!
That's very impressive. I'd have thought bandwidth costs alone would be high, but thinking about it a bit more I suspect map tiles cache incredibly well even without any special tricks, since most tile requests will be from locals hitting the same few ISP caches.
Except, naturally, that openstreetmap.org is mainly aimed at OSM contributors, which typically are actually changing the data and by that invalidating the tiles created for our standard style (which update in minutes).
The flipside to this is how limited OSM is. There are many more things it could be doing, IMHO, but the organization has made the choice to stay small and lean. It does what it is doing quite well though and the folks who run it are impressively efficient.
Rather than the OSMF doing everything, and having one official geocoder, or one official routing engine, instead there is an ecosystem of software and 3rd party companies around OSM who provide that
A frequent question is why the hardware bought and not rented hourly/yearly with a PaaS. First of all the bandwidth requirement are huge and it would put too much pressure on the organization to reach donation goals every year.
Unlike wikipedia the donation drive won't need months. If I remember correctly last year two companies gave 20.000 USD each. That said: donate now please.
There's some complicated nuance in the word "powers" in that sentence. LeafletJS is an open source javascript library for displaying maps on the web. This usually involves bringing in a base-map, and you can get this from a whole myriad of different providers who do the stylising, rendering, and hosting of raster map tiles. They in turn may or may not be doing all of this using vector map data from OpenStreetMap. It's all nicely de-coupled, although for a typical web developer, when you look to "use OpenStreetMap" it will mostly just involve learning how LeafletJS works. Also regardless of which OpenStreetMap-powered tile server you choose to use, you must give credit to OpenStreetMap on your map display. But to illustrate the de-coupling... you might also choose to use "OpenLayers" instead. It's another open source javascript map display library!
As well as giving money, it's also useful to become a member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. You get voting rights for the board, which helps set policy directions, and (possible) licence changes.
and here is where i have a problem with "Open..."anything.
the belief that a non-profit model is the sole method for maintaining ideologically directed development is a fallacy. look to Mozilla, which at times has strayed far from the best interests of its users. look at the wounded soldier project. the belief that making a profit will cause for corruption of the ideological drive of an organization is a fallacy. look at SpaceX which has made more progress in a shorter period of time than just about anyone else to date.
the problem i have with the "please send us money" routine is that it ignores certain basic, fundamental economic and financial realities. if an organization is creating value, then they should be able to exchange value for value. if they are not creating value, then it should be considered R&D or a hobby, and should be funded as such. OpenStreetMap is creating value. there is no reason they shouldn't be able to utilize the freemium model. the freemium model could be coupled with a california style "benefit corporation". by acknowledging that we all must sing for our supper, we are forced to face the realities of the marketplace, of limited resources, of special needs, and so on. by continuing to deny this fact these organizations will constantly be either over or under funded compared to their needs. said more plainly, by staying totally blind to the economic realities of ones marketplace you're gonna make worse business decisions than if you put it all on the table. every time.
bottom line, there is no free lunch, and until the open-source community fully acknowledges and embraces this reality it will be at a disadvantage to other players. and, frankly, it will be lying to itself.
disclaimer: i'm a die-hard open-source software advocate. i just want to see it succeed.
How so..? Open-source is twice free. Free as in beer. Free as in speech. So, OSM could give away the map, but provide value added services to city planners, sell api tokens to advertisers, sell services to private developers.
Oh wow, I just thought up three possibilities in a minute which still allow it to be kept free for individuals.
Last week I began working on a bicycle routing app for android, and there is no obvious way to have unlimited calls to OSM, even if I paid. So, what I must do is host my own instance of it. That's a lot of overhead for most use cases. This is pretty much the opposite way app development has been going, where I build off an api as a service.
If I'm using OSM wrong in this case, I'd sincerely appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
side note, I'm assuming you down-voted me, but thank you for at least saying why. other down-votes received, because i guess they are right. feels like high-school popularity contests all over again when receiving anonymous down-votes. heck, maybe it's possible to have a dissenting comment without a down-vote. HN obviously believes this mechanism is good enough for letting the best stories rise to the top. not sure why HN feels that people's comments should be down-voted but stories shouldn't...
Thanks for an explanation. I was thinking in the direction of commercializing the map itself. Considering how many tech companies go in this direction. I don't know what I was thinking.
And I did downvote you, because when I read your comment, it seemed to merely be bashing on OSM, and didn't seem to be adding much value to the conversation. Now that you've clarified, I kind of regret it.
And yes, anonymous downvotes are terrible, which is why if I downvote I usually post a comment explaining why, unless somebody else has already done it better.
Further there are multiple on device routing and rendering solutions available so you don't really have to use an online service if your don't want to.
The other aspect is that the OSMF itself doesn't really produce any software at all (you could argue that the website software might be different in this respect). What you think of as OSM the OSS project is really lots of companies and individuals providing SW that works with OSM, not the result of a centralized effort a la WMF, Mozilla, or whatever ...
The non-profit model is not a guarantee against corruption, but the for-profit model is a guarantee of corruption.
> look at SpaceX which has made more progress in a shorter period of time than just about anyone else to date.
Toward what? Space vacations for rich people? Neat YouTube videos? To some hypothetical advancement which will only affect those with the money to pay for it? Can you give any reasons why I should give a shit that they've progressed toward other people's goals?
> if an organization is creating value, then they should be able to exchange value for value.
Sure, but in the rest of your post you're proposing that they should be obligated to exchange value for value. Ability and obligation are different things.
> by acknowledging that we all must sing for our supper, we are forced to face the realities of the marketplace, of limited resources, of special needs, and so on.
The reason most of us must sing for our supper is that those with the most supper have the ability to withhold supper until we sing. One of the most critical and powerful elements of free and open projects is declining to participate in that system. That is literally the only reason I care at all about free and open projects.
> disclaimer: i'm a die-hard open-source software advocate. i just want to see it succeed.
"Succeed" is undefined if you don't have defined goals. While money is certainly an existential risk to many "open" projects, acquiescing to a for-profit model would in itself be a failure for my goals for these projects (and indeed, my goals are shared by many who contribute to these projects).
OpenStreetMap needs more than money. There are a number of challenges that come with success as those with different ideologies converge.
* Paid mappers
* Automatic edits/bots/craftmapper debate
* CoC/inclusiveness/diversity arguments
I think this is a critical juncture and care should be taken and lessons learned from communities like Wikipedia who have had their quality lessened by the difficulties of managing human communities.
31 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 75.3 ms ] threadSee: https://www.mapbox.com/mapbeat/
A frequent question is why the hardware bought and not rented hourly/yearly with a PaaS. First of all the bandwidth requirement are huge and it would put too much pressure on the organization to reach donation goals every year.
Besides the donation runs you can also become a member (https://join.osmfoundation.org/normal-membership/) or you company a corporate member (http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Corporate_Members).
Unlike wikipedia the donation drive won't need months. If I remember correctly last year two companies gave 20.000 USD each. That said: donate now please.
disclaimer: work at https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/, we're a corporate member
I've just donated, it's a great project, if you value it too you should give what you are able to.
Kudo to all FOSS GIS developers!
Here's the related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12589447
[0]https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Donations
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Donations
the belief that a non-profit model is the sole method for maintaining ideologically directed development is a fallacy. look to Mozilla, which at times has strayed far from the best interests of its users. look at the wounded soldier project. the belief that making a profit will cause for corruption of the ideological drive of an organization is a fallacy. look at SpaceX which has made more progress in a shorter period of time than just about anyone else to date.
the problem i have with the "please send us money" routine is that it ignores certain basic, fundamental economic and financial realities. if an organization is creating value, then they should be able to exchange value for value. if they are not creating value, then it should be considered R&D or a hobby, and should be funded as such. OpenStreetMap is creating value. there is no reason they shouldn't be able to utilize the freemium model. the freemium model could be coupled with a california style "benefit corporation". by acknowledging that we all must sing for our supper, we are forced to face the realities of the marketplace, of limited resources, of special needs, and so on. by continuing to deny this fact these organizations will constantly be either over or under funded compared to their needs. said more plainly, by staying totally blind to the economic realities of ones marketplace you're gonna make worse business decisions than if you put it all on the table. every time.
bottom line, there is no free lunch, and until the open-source community fully acknowledges and embraces this reality it will be at a disadvantage to other players. and, frankly, it will be lying to itself.
disclaimer: i'm a die-hard open-source software advocate. i just want to see it succeed.
Oh wow, I just thought up three possibilities in a minute which still allow it to be kept free for individuals.
Last week I began working on a bicycle routing app for android, and there is no obvious way to have unlimited calls to OSM, even if I paid. So, what I must do is host my own instance of it. That's a lot of overhead for most use cases. This is pretty much the opposite way app development has been going, where I build off an api as a service.
If I'm using OSM wrong in this case, I'd sincerely appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
side note, I'm assuming you down-voted me, but thank you for at least saying why. other down-votes received, because i guess they are right. feels like high-school popularity contests all over again when receiving anonymous down-votes. heck, maybe it's possible to have a dissenting comment without a down-vote. HN obviously believes this mechanism is good enough for letting the best stories rise to the top. not sure why HN feels that people's comments should be down-voted but stories shouldn't...
And I did downvote you, because when I read your comment, it seemed to merely be bashing on OSM, and didn't seem to be adding much value to the conversation. Now that you've clarified, I kind of regret it.
And yes, anonymous downvotes are terrible, which is why if I downvote I usually post a comment explaining why, unless somebody else has already done it better.
Further there are multiple on device routing and rendering solutions available so you don't really have to use an online service if your don't want to.
The other aspect is that the OSMF itself doesn't really produce any software at all (you could argue that the website software might be different in this respect). What you think of as OSM the OSS project is really lots of companies and individuals providing SW that works with OSM, not the result of a centralized effort a la WMF, Mozilla, or whatever ...
> look at SpaceX which has made more progress in a shorter period of time than just about anyone else to date.
Toward what? Space vacations for rich people? Neat YouTube videos? To some hypothetical advancement which will only affect those with the money to pay for it? Can you give any reasons why I should give a shit that they've progressed toward other people's goals?
> if an organization is creating value, then they should be able to exchange value for value.
Sure, but in the rest of your post you're proposing that they should be obligated to exchange value for value. Ability and obligation are different things.
> by acknowledging that we all must sing for our supper, we are forced to face the realities of the marketplace, of limited resources, of special needs, and so on.
The reason most of us must sing for our supper is that those with the most supper have the ability to withhold supper until we sing. One of the most critical and powerful elements of free and open projects is declining to participate in that system. That is literally the only reason I care at all about free and open projects.
> disclaimer: i'm a die-hard open-source software advocate. i just want to see it succeed.
"Succeed" is undefined if you don't have defined goals. While money is certainly an existential risk to many "open" projects, acquiescing to a for-profit model would in itself be a failure for my goals for these projects (and indeed, my goals are shared by many who contribute to these projects).
* Paid mappers
* Automatic edits/bots/craftmapper debate
* CoC/inclusiveness/diversity arguments
I think this is a critical juncture and care should be taken and lessons learned from communities like Wikipedia who have had their quality lessened by the difficulties of managing human communities.