[HN Gopher] Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap for... ___________________________________________________________________ Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap for free? Author : nathan_phoenix Score : 193 points Date : 2021-12-28 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ctrl.blog) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ctrl.blog) | hirako2000 wrote: | no. I wish osm would adjust their licensing to prevent reuse of | contributions to build non free (as in open) servicing. | simonh wrote: | Since companies including Apple and Microsoft contribute a lot | of data and funding to OSM, what benefits do you imagine would | result from preventing them using it? | pcthrowaway wrote: | It's the permissive vs. free software license debate. In | practice there are people who won't be able to use the data for | their use case if a non-permissive license is applied. | nightpool wrote: | > In practice there are people who won't be able to use the | data for their use case if a non-permissive license is | applied | | Well, of course. The whole _point_ of a non-permissive | license is to.... not permit things. It 's frustrating to see | people bring this out like some sort of gotcha. I use the | AGPL because I think it's important that users have access to | the source code the applications they interact with operate | on. If people aren't okay with that, then they're completely | welcome to not use my code. | | (I am somewhat sympathetic to people who think that the GPL's | definition of "Combined Work" is too broad--I've personally | never viewed the inclusion of dependencies in a dynamic | programming language with strong module boundaries like Node, | Ruby or Python as creating a "Combined Work"--and I'd happily | license my works with a theoretical LAGPL or an Affero-like | Mozilla Public License if either of those were available. | Unfortunately, the AGPL remains the only game in town for | networked software.) | pcthrowaway wrote: | I'm not sure if you're aware, but the data on OSM is | covered by their ODbL which is a "share-alike" license. | From their FAQ[1]: What do you mean by | Share-Alike? If you publicly use any adapted | version of our database, or a partial extraction from it, | or works (such as maps) produced from an adapted database, | you must also offer that adapted database under the ODbL. | In other words, if you improve our data and then distribute | it, you need to share your improvements with the general | public at no charge. A painless way to do that is to | contribute your improvements directly back to | OpenStreetMap. Share-Alike only applies if you | distribute what you have done to outside people or | organisations. You can do what you like at home, or in your | school, organisation or company ... the following section | does not apply to you. | | It's true that people can use their software and data for | non-free services built on non-FOSS code, but people using | the data publicly _do_ have to distribute modifications to | the data-set under the same license | | [1]: | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Database_License | nightpool wrote: | Yes, I'm well aware. I think it maybe makes more sense to | make this reply to one of the other comments I'm replying | to. | Brakenshire wrote: | I find the distinction difficult to understand. The way I | interpret the OSM license, the data is really not freely | available to use in a commercial context except as a base | layer. If you use the OSM data in combination with any other | data sources you have to publish both the resulting dataset | and any processing steps or algorithms used to produce the | dataset. So that means you cannot combine OSM data with any | dataset which cannot be released, and it also means any | innovation you develop in processing the data cannot be | protected. | | I can see why the license was chosen, clearly it's necessary | to prevent Microsoft or Apple taking the data and closing it | off for their use, but at the same time it seems to make most | business models using the data unsustainable. It's a shame | from a HN perspective, you'd hope open data would allow for | the continual opportunity for the creation of startups to | innovate on using the data, locking open competition in the | same way that open software has done, but it doesn't seem to | be working out that way. Most companies in the area seem to | be creators and consumers of base layers, I don't see many | doing anything with the geographical database. | | Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the terms of the license. | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | It's more complex than that. OSM's licence isn't a direct | parallel of one single software licence, but it has an | LGPL-ish permissive aspect for making things from the data | ("Produced Works"). | | OSM data is used a lot for routing (pretty much all bike | navigation apart from Google's uses OSM data) and | increasingly for GIS-type analysis. | chaz6 wrote: | I am happy to contribute for free, but after what happened with | Mapillary, I would like a clause that states that should OSM be | sold, I would be entitled to a portion of the sale amount | commensurate with my contributions, or the option to withhold my | contributions from the sale. | yosito wrote: | This article is a bit scattered. But it makes one good point: Big | Tech companies are profiting off of the OSM data set, while | employing no one working on OSM. How do we change that? | betwixthewires wrote: | These companies contribute ~17% of worldwide road change | updates, if that's not employing anyone to work on OSM then | what exactly do you mean by "work on OSM?" | simonh wrote: | Apple and Microsoft do contribute a lot of data back to OSM | though, as pointed out in the article, and they help fund it. | OSM doesn't employ anyone full time, but there are Apple and MS | employees that contribute to OSM near or actually full time. So | what exactly is it you think needs changing? | matkoniecz wrote: | Strictly speaking OSM does not employ anyone partly because | it is not some legal entity. | | (Open Street Map Foundation has very limited employees and | contractors, see https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Contract | ors_and_employee... ) | burkaman wrote: | We don't need to change that because it isn't true: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29714360 | | The author is using very specific phrasing ("in the OSM | community") that apparently excludes corporate employees that | contribute to OSM. | tapiok wrote: | of course it is true OSM mappers provide free labor (also) to | corporate giants. They have vested (economic) interest to not | fork the OSM project exactly for this reason. Maybe they will | do it one day though. | delusional wrote: | Corollary: Why are contributions to OpenStreetMap systematically | undervalued? | | I think it's a much more interesting question WHY we are being | asked to contribute to OSM for free. Why isn't it | possible/feasible to gain compensation relative to the amount of | value contributed? And what does that mean for our "free market" | in general. If you can't compensate this kind of project, are | they being repressed by the inherent incentive structures? | | I don't think that's a failure of the OSM project, but rather a | failure of our economic system. | IgorPartola wrote: | About 10 years ago I helped build a piece of software that would | use OSM data and that data needed to be precise. Turned out that | a lot of the Tiger Maps scans were not super accurate so I urged | our company to hire a data entry team to clean up a bunch of it. | We had I think 5 or 6 people whose job it was to precisely clean | up OSM data based on satellite imagery in a bunch of small-medium | cities as well as Chicago. Everyone benefitted from this which | was awesome. | tomrod wrote: | In today's AI/ML saturated landscape, your approach to data | labeling to augment applications is much needed. Awesome to | hear it went well! | tverbeure wrote: | The TIGER data was (is?) terrible in terms of exact | coordinates, but the graph of the streets is usually accurate. | | Back in 2007 or so, I spent hundreds of hours aligning TIGER | data to the satellite imagery in OSM, usually in cities I never | had been before. If I remember correctly, I did most of Fresno. | :-) | | I'm totally fine with my edits being used commercially too. | matkoniecz wrote: | > Microsoft Bing uses OSM in several regions, and is slowly | moving from it's traditional providers to OSM globally. They | provide machine-learning (ML) datasets that they have computed | from areal imagery. They employ nobody in the OSM community. | | Microsoft Bing made its aerial imagery available for OSM editing, | this is often very very very useful for mapping (speaking from | own experience as an OSM mapper). | | See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/product/imagery- | service... | | > The rights that you have under this agreement are limited | solely to aerial imagery use in a non-commercial online editor | application of OpenStreetMap maps (an "Application") | | see also extra info in | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps#Terms.2C_Clari... | | It is an interesting case as cost of that is basically nothing to | Microsoft, this action has a very clear benefits to them, has | negative influence on their competition like Google, has | basically no negative side effects to OSM community (unlike | company hiring people) and provides service that would cost OSM | community ridiculous amounts of money if we would need to buy it | (it would be impossible for us to buy worldwide aerial imagery of | such quality). | | It is weird to not mention it in that article. | gnufx wrote: | Not news to Mateusz, but Microsoft also provide some | "streetside" imagery, and there are other imagery providers, | like ESRI (lower resolution, but typically more up-to-date and | better aligned where I've used it). | londons_explore wrote: | > costs basically nothing to Microsoft | | I wouldn't be surprised if this agreement was a big headache | when Microsoft is licensing imagery from various satellite | imagery providers. | matkoniecz wrote: | EDIT: I rephrased to | | > cost of that is basically nothing to Microsoft | | --------------- | | I am unaware about internal Microsoft proceedings, but it | seems possible. | | Though I guess that given Microsoft scale and benefits from | that it should be possible to describe it as "costs basically | nothing to Microsoft" | | It is not low sum, I would be bankrupted either by lawyer | consultations on this topic and by extra server traffic if I | would be paying for that, but on Microsoft scale it is | probably nothing. | cbozeman wrote: | Well we have SpaceX now... and Microsoft is a trillion dollar | company. | | Launch some satellites. | delusional wrote: | The highest quality aerial photography of my country | (Denmark) is taken from planes, not satellites. | frosted-flakes wrote: | "Satellite" imagery on Google Maps is a misnomer, and | when it launched there was a big disagreement on the name | that got brought all the way to Larry and Sergey. At the | end of the meeting one of them said "call it Bird Mode", | but the devs ignored that and stuck with "satellite" | because they though bird mode was silly. | | More details in this Twitter thread: | https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370126678253569 | hyperionplays wrote: | Same for Australia. NearMap is mostly plane (and hot air | balloon) images for the high quality stuff. | astrange wrote: | Bing actually has the highest quality aerial images of | Australia in some places, licensed from Vexcel. | | Meanwhile nobody has a good 3D map of Brisbane - Apple | has none, Google's is labeled (c) 2021 but is | inexplicably actually from 2010 or so. | ReleaseCandidat wrote: | They owned Vexcel for some years: In | 2006, Vexcel Imaging was acquired by Microsoft | Corporation and contributed as a subsidiary to the | success of Microsoft's Bing program by pushing the | envelope of photogrammetric hardware and software | technology with innovations that underpinned the Bing | Maps web service and mapping platform. | | https://www.vexcel-imaging.com/company/ | onphonenow wrote: | The article is very weird. If the author doesn't understand the | value of the aerial imagery (global) they have obviously never | tried to license this stuff globally. | | That alone should give Microsoft "platinum" status. | | Secondly, you need users to justify investments in these | products. Microsoft brings users. Now businesses and others | start paying attention, updating their details etc. | 123pie123 wrote: | I wish Ordnance Survey in the UK would help out a little with the | UK dataset - even with just say the buildings | g_p wrote: | OS is increasingly making available data under public open | licences. I believe data under open government licence should | be compatible with OSM, as it's pretty permissive. | | If you combine a few different datasets you can build a pretty | good picture | | https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-government/product... | | The UPRN dataset gives you a point coordinate for each | property. | | The Zoomstack map gives building level vectors, I believe (if | it isn't Zoomstack, it's one of the other free and open ones), | and is pretty usable in qgis and other tools. | 123pie123 wrote: | thanks, would that make it ok for someone to import the | information from OS to OSM? | | edit: found the answer (abeit an old thread) | https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=66173 | juliansimioni wrote: | Here is why you should contribute to OSM even though there are | major players profiting from it: | | OSM is big enough and good enough that all the tech giants | (except Google) would do better to start with OSM and improve it | to meet their needs than to start a new, completely proprietary | map from scratch. | | That means that we are in an amazing place where in addition to | the substantial volunteer OSM community, there are contributions | from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and hundreds or thousands of | smaller companies all coming back in to a single global map that | everyone can use. It's very worth it to do work that strengthens | OSM, as it increases the number of companies that will use it, | and possibly contribute back, rather than doing work the world at | large won't benefit from. | | P.S. As a disclaimer, I am co-founder of Geocode Earth | (https://geocode.earth) a small business that does indeed profit | from OSM (and other open) data. We also contribute back both | through OSM contributions and by releasing our core software as | the Pelias geocoder (https://pelias.io) | humanistbot wrote: | Right! Remember when Google made their Maps API far more | restrictive and it broke a whole bunch of cool applications | that were built on top of it? That can't happen with OSM. | alufers wrote: | OSM is so good that even the fire fighters use it in Poland for | navigation and finding fire hydrants. The funny thing is that | if you modify or add a fire hydrant a guy from the emergency | services asks to send a picture of it before he approves the | change. | purple_turtle wrote: | To clarify: they maintain(ed) own reviewed replica of OSM | data and asked about suspicious edits. | | Any edits in OSM go live immediately without review. | Tostino wrote: | I feel like this is where there could be some improvements. | It would be quite nice to allow a review process to be | setup for some types of edits. Plenty of examples in the | market to get inspiration from. | purple_turtle wrote: | In many areas there is zero or just one local mapper. | | And vandalism and malicious editing remains rare. | | That would be enormous effort for minimal benefit. | spockz wrote: | How does that work? Does OSM verify who emergency services | employees are? Or is the item owned by an account of an | employee of the emergency services? | | It seems like this data should be coming directly from some | government database. | purple_turtle wrote: | To clarify: they maintain(ed) own reviewed replica of OSM | data and asked about suspicious edits. | | Any edits in OSM go live immediately without review. | | And Poland has no government database of hydrants or AED. | | In fact Polish community is right now working on making | decent AED database - with | https://aed.openstreetmap.org.pl/ created recently that | shows already collected data | juliansimioni wrote: | That's amazing! I know that lots of local and regional | governments are trending towards using OSM as their source of | truth for data about their area, but hadn't heard that | particular story. Love it! | lostlogin wrote: | How is this not done by the installer? Seems like a problem | that didn't need crowd sourcing. | purple_turtle wrote: | That would make sense but at least some companies that | maintain hydrants are also using OSM data. | matkoniecz wrote: | Yes, would it be really better to be in situation where | standard dataset is proprietary and controlled by Google? | lukeqsee wrote: | I second Julian here, as the founder of another company (in | profile) that profits heavily from OSM's data set. | | It's amazing how good OSM is today, and the rate at which it's | expanding and improving means it will only get much better over | time. | durkie wrote: | Thanks for Stadia maps! Happy paying customer here and it | substantially lowered my map hosting bill compared to mapbox. | lukeqsee wrote: | You're welcome! Reach out if you ever need anything. :-) | yepthatsreality wrote: | Yep I worked with a popular scooter company in Taiwan to help | build software to implement Taiwan's left hand turn rules into | GPS. It was just a matter of labeling the correct | intersections. They wanted to eventually share the changes | upstream with OSM. Very fun project that I miss very much. | | Sadly I don't think the map editing SQLite cli/gui tool made it | out to OSS, even though that was a request I had. | BoumTAC wrote: | Does anyone know what happened to the Amazon team ? I was | following their edits here: https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm- | changesets?comment=amap | | They were one of the main contributors to OSM and now they nearly | stop contributing to OSM (they are still contributing but maybe | 10 times less than before) | [deleted] | kranke155 wrote: | Seems like a great use case for web3 and DAOs later on when they | become a bit less anarchic. You could tokenise contributions to | OpenStreetMap. | timeon wrote: | If someone does not want to contribute for free it is his | decision. But many people like volunteering. OSM has already | massive contribution from hobby users (and from corporations as | well). What will "web3" solve here? Not everything needs to be | monetized. | fdr wrote: | I recently picked up OSM mapping. The tools are way better than | ten years ago when I had a look: I like both the web editor and | the "Go Map!!" iOS application. My motivation is mostly so that I | can have accurate results when visiting or re-visiting a place. | In a few months (or weeks), the sheer number of OSM consumers | allow you to receive the benefit of your own changes. Write once, | read everywhere. | | I don't advance this is necessarily sufficient or OSM is getting | a great deal for its value, but it's what got me involved after a | long period watching from the sidelines: it was a wise suggestion | from an AllTrails staff member on a support ticket. | an_alien_heat wrote: | globular-toast wrote: | > I'm not gonna lie, I kind of like that idea. In the OSM world | you just have to have faith that your edits are helping people. | There is basically no feedback loop. | | Do people really need this? I use OSM whenever I go on a walk | anywhere in the world and I often think about the local mappers | who maintain the data. I can say with almost complete certainty | that someone, somewhere has appreciated my own OSM contributions | at some point. That's enough for me. | EGreg wrote: | Could this be a good use case for cryptocurrency? | justapassenger wrote: | Solution still looking for problems to solve? | lawtalkinghuman wrote: | No. | EGreg wrote: | How are you so sure? Please elaborate | lawtalkinghuman wrote: | OSM is making a volunteer-run open source GIS dataset, not | an unregulated speculative securities offering. | EGreg wrote: | who is talking about securities? I'm talking about | micropayments | [deleted] | matkoniecz wrote: | For which part? | | Main complaint in article is that major companies should employ | people from OSM community. But inability to transfer money is | not something blocking Microsoft or FB here. | EGreg wrote: | The part where people contribute anonymously and receive | compensation | jmnicolas wrote: | To me this article reads like "I want to get a job paid by the | big players". The fact is, it's not a one way street, they're | contributing back with data. We all benefit from this. | | While I dislike what these companies stand for (I use a Linux | desktop and a degoogled phone) in this case I don't think they're | in the wrong. | cletus wrote: | It's a good question to ask. Many here probably aren't old enough | to remember the cautionary tale of CDDB/Gracenote [1]. | | Back when Compact Discs were still a thing. on Winamp, WMP, etc | you wanted to display a list of tracks, covert art, the artist, | etc. Volunteers contributed this data from their own discs (that | could be identified). This was before MP3s and ID3 tagging. | | So volunteers built the CDDB with this data. The entity that | "owned" it silently put in a copyright assignment with any | submissions and ultimately became a company called Gracenote, | which still exists today. They also removed the free access to | CDDB. | | None of this matters today but at the time it was a huge loss and | a betrayal. | | So I personally think it's completely fine to contribute to | something like OSM as long as there are guarantees in there that | the open access to that data can't be lost. It doesn't bother me | if the likes of Apple and Microsoft use that for commercial uses, | particularly if in doing so they contribute data back to the | project. | | This is why Stackoverflow dumps [2] were done in the first place | and why they're so important: as a guarantee against that data | being taken away or put behind a paywall. | | Beware the CDDBs of the world however. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB | | [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/224873/all-stack- | ex... | johannes1234321 wrote: | In a way it is how Google operates: One can send in details | about shops and corrections for the maps, but Google is the | sole owner of the resulting map. | | With OSM however I have the same rights to the combined data as | any other entity. | matkoniecz wrote: | > as long as there are guarantees in there that the open access | to that data can't be lost. | | 1) current dataset can be fully downloaded and is available | under a copyleft license | | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm | | 2) it would be relatively hard to hijack project | https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Term... | | OSMF agrees that it may only use or sub-license Your Contents | as part of a database and only under the terms of one or more | of the following licences: ODbL 1.0 for the database and DbCL | 1.0 for the individual contents of the database; CC-BY-SA 2.0; | or such other free and open licence (for example, | http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/) as may from time to time be | chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership and approved by at | least a 2/3 majority vote of active contributors. | danShumway wrote: | > as long as there are guarantees in there that the open access | to that data can't be lost | | This is the key point. The problem isn't mutual benefit, the | problem is when communities can be seized by private entities | or have the rug pulled out from under them, effectively | stealing a community and shutting it down for their own gain. | That's the difference between OSM and GoodReads. If you're | going to donate time, make sure you donate time to commons, not | to companies. | | That being said, OSM does have a lot of guarantees about its | data in place, and even better has license requirements that | force companies who extend that data to contribute back. It's | good that OSM is seeing more usage across the industry. | phh wrote: | At this point, I don't really consider OSM an OSS project, but an | infrastructure. | | It has small value for everyone, but all combined usage, it has | immense economical value for the society. All alone, it's not | really useful to end-users, but it can help a lot of businesses | that couldn't exist before it. | | Maps are already considered infrastructure, since they are | already made by governments! | | The only missing part to say OSM is an infrastructure, is for | governments to actually contribute to it. | skadge wrote: | Some governments already do, and sometimes at a massive scale. | See for instance the mass import of French cadastre in OSM in | 2008. We are talking about millions of georeferenced entities. | Proven wrote: | matkoniecz wrote: | > The only missing part to say OSM is an infrastructure, is for | governments to actually contribute to it. | | The best way to contribute is to openly license government | datasets, and many such datasets are already in use and being | used to improve OSM (and often problems are reported back, | resulting in fixes in official datasets!). | | Government official editing directly would be in many cases | more harmful than useful. | einpoklum wrote: | > The best way to contribute is to openly license government | datasets | | Second best way to contribute is to force commercial | corporations to share the datasets they have of what is | essentially public data - what is in the physical world and | where. Currently, I see a lot of this kind of data on Google | Maps, but not on OSM (e.g. location of various cultural and | commercial venues, public transportation lines and schedules | etc.) | | And by "force" I mean something like legislation or | regulation. | phh wrote: | I understand why you say this (which sums up to "governments | are bureaucrats, please get out of the way for us to do the | actual job"), but the issue is that there are still people | needed to go from government data to OSM. | | Ideally, governments would simply pay OSM people to do it on | their own, but eh, we know this can never happen, and even if | it did, greedy people might be tempted by that kind of money | and would go into the OSM community just for that. | matkoniecz wrote: | Once data is high quality actual import is quite easy to | do. | | Vast majority of time is used up on handling useful but not | fully correct data. | | I am not aware of any datasets that are high quality, on a | compatible license, including data of interest to OSM and | existing for longer than a year - that would not be | imported already. | | There are more people interested in making imports than | high quality datasets on a compatible licenses, this is not | the bottleneck. | gnufx wrote: | For clarity, I assume "import" isn't meant to mean | everything in the dataset is shortly in OSM, but it's | available to aid with mapping (e.g. free UK Ordnance | Survey data). | kelnos wrote: | This sounds like another tired variation on the "open source is | dead" article that popped up here a few weeks ago. | | People contribute to things for free for a variety of reasons. | I've made only a couple contributions to OSM, but I'm happy to do | so. The world needs freely available mapping data. Sure, the | companies that benefit from it the most may not contribute | financially or with manpower (just like with most open source), | but that doesn't change the usefulness of OSM. | | I'd much rather we have something like OSM than have all this | data locked up behind paywalls and contracts. Who does and | doesn't support the work is irrelevant to me. | nraynaud wrote: | I have tried providing a correction to OSM, they never got | moderated or integrated. But there is a local club because they | used the email address I provided to invite me. | | I don't think I want to spend time doing it again. | purple_turtle wrote: | Edits on OpenStreetMap are not moderated, any edit goes live | immediately. | | Do you remember your account name? | throwaway984393 wrote: | If all open source software had new license terms tomorrow that | said "no commercial use unless you pay me a license fee", they'd | just stop using open source. Using it is a business calculation. | If you don't get support and you have to pay for it, you might as | well pay for proprietary software that you can get support from. | | And maybe that's fine! Maybe we shouldn't let companies use the | software _at all_. But that would have ecosystem-shaking results | as the costs are passed down to consumers and fewer engineers are | employed. At this point, the whole world is dependent on OSS. | | Open Source does not exist for people to get paid. If it did, | it'd be the worst software gig in the world, by pay anyway :) To | ask for money just because somebody else is getting money and | you're not is simply envy and greed. Either ask for the money up | front before you release the thing, or don't worry about what | other people are getting paid. | hirako2000 wrote: | The (strict) philosophy of open source isn't to take money from | its adopters, or to prevent them to monetise, it is to spread | the openness to serve humanity by having the intelligence | reused and built upon rather than energy wasted on replicating | and competing. | | Competition is a waste, contrary to the misinformation we have | been subjected to, it only serves a minority at the expense of | everyone else. Collaboration offers far greater efficiencies, | the essence and success of open source lies in the openness and | contagion of openness to share the yield of commutative | expenses. | | I think the valid discontent you express is with regards to the | open source flag being used to promote goodwill while in | reality building a business model on it with closeness to | protect monetisation. that I agree has been a plague and a very | disingenuous approach to doing business, at the end hurting | opensource, at least tarnishing the goodness reputation open | source has built for decades. | einpoklum wrote: | > Competition is a waste | | I partially agree with this claim, but - FOSS software does | not prevent competition, it just takes the intellectual | property and copyrights aspect from it. You compete in | conditions of access to your competitor's data as well as | yours. And there is intense competition in FOSS! It doesn't | devolve into everybody working on the same thing. But the | point is it is always possible to derive from one of the | "branches" of competition and do your own thing. | | (Case in point: Desktop environments which based themselves | on GNOME 2 because they didn't like where GNOME 3 was headed | design-wise.) | throwaway984393 wrote: | I guess we should be more specific: in OSS, there is | _licensing competition_ in that there are multiple | licenses. Competition between different OSS platforms is | _platform competition_ , and competition between | applications on a platform is _ecosystem competition_. | | When you think about it, there are many levels of | competition, and very little code re-use. Only a few shared | libraries or APIs/ABIs are actually reused by more than a | handful of apps. | cherrycherry98 wrote: | My understanding of the philosophy of open source is | different. I believe it was always more fundamentally about | freedom and specifically encouraging a marketplace of ideas. | | Going back to the early days with Stallman and the GPL it was | about making software more transparent and empowering users. | You can see how something is implemented, modify how it works | for your own needs, etc, just like if you were to buy a | physical machine like a car. | | Competition is not a waste, it is the means by which free | actors improve society. In theory there if there's one | provider of everything, there is less waste, and that may be | true for certain periods of time but not in general. Power | structures ossify, become bloated, corrupt, and inefficient. | If you have a monopoly, even if it's the most benevolent, | open one in the world, the incentives to improve are | diminished. The most powerful incentive to improvement is the | threat of those you depend on for money, power, or status, | freely choosing against you, which requires competition. You | need people that are able to look at the status quo and | decide that they can do it better, creating the next | generation of whatever it may be. | | The OSS community has lots of competition and is better for | it. Linux competes with the BSDs and private OSs. There's | tons of distros building off each other trying new ideas. | Forking is expected. It doesn't always lead to the next great | project but it moves the needle. | ordiel wrote: | No, but they can change the licence to indicate it cannot be | used for displaying "data agregations" (like the one FB does), | that way forcing those wanting to use the OSM data plus that of | their quality asurance to either not using OSM data or to make | their QA data public (hoping they will chose the latter) which | would in deed benefit us all | heikkilevanto wrote: | I have contributed a few details to OSM, as well as to Google | Maps. Not for any high-flying moral reasons, but because I use | them and found the small errors irritating. | CodeWriter23 wrote: | Yes we should definitely kill off the only mapping solution | accessible to bootstrapping startups because big players are | semi-freeloading. | tapiok wrote: | there are other options. For example https://n8n.io/blog/fair- | code-for-sustainable-open-source-al... | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | This article is just factually wrong. | | It alleges repeatedly that Facebook, Apple, Microsoft etc "employ | nobody in the OSM community". They do. Microsoft even employed | the founder of OSM, Steve Coast, for a while. | | If your criterion is 'involved in OSM prior to current | employment', I could name a bunch of people currently working for | Facebook, Amazon, Snap etc of whom that's true. (One such person | even stood for election to the OSM Foundation board this month.) | | But, as others have pointed out, I'd hope we're more welcoming | than that. As far as I'm concerned, if you're editing OSM you're | part of the community. | kevinventullo wrote: | My experience with the more extreme OSM folks is that as soon | as you are working for a large company, you are no longer a | member of the community. More generally, there is nothing the | big companies could do to make them happy, short of divesting | completely from OSM so that they can get their hobby project | from 2008 back. | betwixthewires wrote: | I've never talked to anyone like this, not sure where you get | it from. | | You get people that are suspicious and cautious about big | corp sponsorship of OSM, and rightly so, EEE was and still is | a thing. But in OSM, contributors are contributors, plain and | simple. | kevinventullo wrote: | I get it from personal experience having once worked on OSM | for a big company. Next time you're at an OSM conference, | strike up a conversation with anyone from a big tech | company and ask about folks like this, I'm sure they'll | have plenty of stories. Better yet, go to their talk and | watch the Q&A session get derailed by some guy who's mad | about the way a bike path was tagged. | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | I'm sure you can find any given opinion in a community of 2m | registered users with a public mailing list, especially any | community which includes a bunch of 17-year old Linux | enthusiasts, but it's not remotely representative of the OSM | community nor a particularly useful subset to identify. | kevinventullo wrote: | I agree they are not representative of the community, but | they are a quite vocal minority, to whom anyone working on | OSM in a corporate context is well-acquainted. | | I offer my observations as a warning to take any anti- | corporate sentiment from self-proclaimed OSM community | representatives with a grain of salt. | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | I'd fully agree with the latter. Sometimes (often) a | gobshite on a mailing list is just a gobshite on a | mailing list. (He says, looking anxiously at his own 2000 | list postings over 17 years.) | | The lists are sometimes attributed a significance they | don't really have any more - they have a few hundred | subscribers max in a massive project. Most of the OSM US | community discussion happens on Slack, in Germany it's a | webforum, some countries use Telegram and so on. | rStar wrote: | bee_rider wrote: | Yeah, that struck me as a bit of an odd repeated phrase. I | think they mean that these companies don't have anyone employed | specifically to contribute to the project. But that's only one | of many ways a company might contribute to a project... | gnufx wrote: | Right, and I'm rather concerned that this be taken as | representative of the OSM UK community. | | Also, it seems pretty easy to add something in the Organic Maps | app (ne maps.me), for instance, not that I use that for | mapping. | thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: | Apple had full time OSM mappers as well as sponsored weekly | mapping meetups where employees could volunteer to help with | mapping. I'm not sure if they still do this. The OSM and | cartographers I worked with at Apple were all very passionate | about helping map remote parts of the world and the benefits | mapping brings during disasters. | Schiendelman wrote: | When I was on Apple Maps in 2018-19 they still did this! I'm | pretty confident they still do. | BoumTAC wrote: | They still have a team, you can follow their edits here: | https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-changesets?comment=adt | techsupporter wrote: | I sent this article to a friend of mine who works for Microsoft | and they came back with an interesting anecdote: several groups | inside Microsoft, including theirs, have recurring "hack for | good" gatherings, especially during the pandemic when regular | get-togethers aren't happening. One of the things they do for | this is to log into a community team (I'm not sure of the exact | term, I don't contribute to OSM) and spend a couple of hours | tagging landmarks and streets and edges of farms and various | other geographic features while BSing together as a team. | | Sounds kind of relaxing to me, and a way to contribute a bulk | of hours to OSM that I hadn't thought of. | hirsin wrote: | Can confirm, this is popular on my team. Additionally, this | should also direct actual dollars to OSM - volunteering for | an organization is matched in cash by Microsoft, to the tune | of 20-something an hour. | CrazyStat wrote: | > volunteering for an organization is matched in cash by | Microsoft, to the tune of 20-something an hour. | | I've never heard of a policy like this before, but I like | it a lot (admittedly I've been mostly in academia). Is this | unique to Microsoft or more common? | hirsin wrote: | Google does this at 10/hour as well. Unsure of others. | Both Google and Microsoft match cash donations too up to | 15k/year - it's a wonderful perk to have after you've | basically covered all your living expenses and savings | etc. I can eg fund a minor scholarship at half cost, or | direct serious money to a cause I care about. | CrazyStat wrote: | Yeah, I've heard of matching monetary charitable | donations before but this is the first time I've heard of | matching volunteer time with money. | | Thanks! | ydlr wrote: | > They employ nobody in the OSM community. | | I imagine many of the employees that do the work mentioned in the | article would consider themselves part of the OSM community. | petee wrote: | I suspect they are suggesting a difference between working to | contribute as part of the community, versus being solely to | further their company's product. | notreallyserio wrote: | I was hoping they'd include a comment describing what they mean | when they talk about employing someone in the OSM community | (and how they'd know). | burkaman wrote: | Here's one example of a person employed by Apple to work on | OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/andrewwiseman | | Facebook and Microsoft are also "Gold Corporate Members" of OSM | which costs EUR10,000 / year, and they are "Corporate Partners" | of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, which does employ | people to directly work on OSM: https://www.hotosm.org/. | | Also apparently "nearly 17% of the global road network was last | edited by a corporate data-team member" | (https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/SPRQVZ/), and lots of | people must be employed by corporations to make that happen, | even if it's mostly automated edits. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | Seems like circular reasoning: | | Being a part of the OSM community means they aren't employed by | OSM as employees. If they employ the person, they're no longer | a community member but an employee. | | I don't actually see the issue. | matkoniecz wrote: | > they aren't employed by OSM | | Note that OSM does not employ anyone (Open Street Map | Foundation has very limited employees and contractors, see ht | tps://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Contractors_and_employee... | ) | matkoniecz wrote: | > The only one I can recommend as being easy to use is | StreetComplete for Android | | This is nice to hear as major contributor to that software (if | you use that app and something is unclear then it is likely a bug | that should be reported to | https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues ) | mwattsun wrote: | I've enjoyed Google Maps for many years and never paid for it. | Apple MapKit appears to be free. I improve the experience for | others when I help improve the maps and in turn my experience is | improved by the contributions of others. It's costs Google and | Apple money to provide the infrastructure for this, which they | obtain in various ways such as advertising. It doesn't bother me | if someone wants to advertise their store on a map I helped | create. In fact, even that improves the amount of information I | have about a place. | | My answer to the title question is a strong "yes" in this case | and I consider it akin to a grocery store putting up signs saying | "Please help us keep costs down and pass the savings along to you | by returning your cart to the cart stand." Giant mega corp | Walmart does this if memory serves. | | I like that humanity has built such an amazing thing as maps and | like it when people return their shopping carts. | sam_lowry_ wrote: | > I've enjoyed Google Maps for many years and never paid for | it. | | You did pay for Google Maps indirectly as you were and still | are a product Google sells to advertisers. | seaman1921 wrote: | there is nothing like 'paying indirectly'. | | did it overall cost them any money ? no | | did it overall cost them any physical effort ? no | | did google force them to use the service ? no | | Does it really sting so much to admit Google Maps is a free | to use service? | juanbyrge wrote: | I feel like I have derived so much value from Google Maps, | especially turn by turn navigation, than I don't even | consider the advertisement aspects. I would happily pay a | monthly fee to use it. | | Before it you had to use paper maps or use those very | expensive and crappy Garmin devices. | spookthesunset wrote: | I remember back when we were at an intermediate stage of | maps when you could type an address into Mapquest and then | print out the directions to it and take that stack of paper | with you. | | Now days you can drop into the middle of almost anywhere on | the globe and get mostly accurate on-the-ground directions | regardless of if you walk, take public transport or drive. | Made navigating Tokyo so much easier! | mwattsun wrote: | It used to be a joke that married couples travelling would | fight over maps. The man was always driving and the wife | was always reading the large unwieldy paper map. The man | would get mad about a woman's trouble reading the map. The | wife would retort "What happened to your vaunted sense of | direction? Why are you such a cheap skate to wait until we | are lost before buying a map at a service station?" Good | times. | mping wrote: | Google doesn't need you to pay, they only need you to do your | thing using Android, Chrome, Google Analytics, Google Search, | Google Maps, etc. They will monetize on your usage. I'm OK | with the concept, but the implementation ethics can be, to | put it gently, debatable - most of the time people are not | aware of the privacy implications. | TheJoeMan wrote: | Question: if I contribute a fix to Google Maps or Apple Maps, | does that fix back-propogate to OSM? My home address needs to | be slightly shifted and wondering for best practice. | windthrown wrote: | No, in fact copying from Google Maps is a violation of their | terms of service: | | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FAQ#Why_don.27t_you_just. | .. | astrange wrote: | The answers saying "no" are not necessarily correct, but the | actual answer depends on which country you live in. | matkoniecz wrote: | If you contribute to Google Maps then you fix private Google | database. | seaman1921 wrote: | this is not true, you fix it for everyone using Google maps | (which is basically everyone) | purple_turtle wrote: | Where I can download Google map data dataset for my own | processing? | | Yes, Google makes apps usable by general public but their | database is proprietary - including what people | contribute for free. | thepete2 wrote: | No and that is IMO the point of using OSM in the first place. | The data is public and free for everyone and if you | contribute there's the possibility of other services adopting | your change. I know that mapbox integrates osm data, Google | and Apple might too. | VictorPath wrote: | OpenStreetMap has an "on the ground rule" where a street, a | street name, a city, a city name etc. are determined by who | currently has control on the ground. So the Malvinas are the | Falkland Islands, Derry is Londonderry etc. | | The sole exception to this is the Crimea, which the OSM board | ruled is exempt from this rule, as they favor the Ukrainian | government over the Russian government. | Symbiote wrote: | "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic | tangents." | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | Also, looking at your comment history: "Please don't use Hacker | News for political or ideological battle. It tramples | curiosity." | BeFlatXIII wrote: | I went on an OSM editing binge a few years ago to make Pokemon | Go's in-game map better. Now that I've done that, I haven't had | much reason to edit it more. | efsavage wrote: | > They employ nobody in the OSM community. | | If they are contributing data, they are _part of_ the OSM | community. | nurgasemetey wrote: | While working with municipalities, they provided us with | shapefile of bicycle routes and add to our systems. It would have | been better if they just added bicycle routes to OSM but I think | they don't want to take responsibility of maintaining it. | rStar wrote: | zaik wrote: | I contribute to OSM because I want to make alternatives to Google | Maps like OsmAnd or Organicmaps more useful. That big players | also use open data does not invalidate my reasons to contribute. | jefftk wrote: | In fact, that big players also use it supports your reasons: | everyone contributing back data helps make OSM more useful. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | I use OSM data for free too, and don't employ anyone from OSM. | | Why wouldn't I fix the data around where I live, if I can, and if | it helps me, and everyone else trying to navigate here? I fix | stuff here, someone else fixes stuff somewhere else, there are | also gamified apps (atleast one), where you can get "badges" to | input basic data to OSM, and everyone profits. | cheeaun wrote: | I'm curious to know if the companies that use OSM actually | contribute back? Like fixing all the wrong/malicious data. | matkoniecz wrote: | Microsoft Bing made its aerial imagery available for OSM | editing, this is often very very very useful for mapping. | | See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/product/imagery- | service... | | > The rights that you have under this agreement are limited | solely to aerial imagery use in a non-commercial online editor | application of OpenStreetMap maps (an "Application") | | see also extra info in | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps#Terms.2C_Clari... | burkaman wrote: | Yes: https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/SPRQVZ/ | | > nearly 17% of the global road network was last edited by a | corporate data-team member. | tapiok wrote: | ...and their share of edits is growing. Maybe one day OSM | mappers will wake up and realize they provide free labor to | corporate giants that sucks economic value from community. | Hopefully it will be not too late. | ciphol wrote: | Corporations, whether giant or not, create products which | people chose to purchase because they are useful. That's | creating value, not sucking value. | | Sometimes a corporation can "suck value" by using | anticompetitive behavior to prevent competitors from | offering better/cheaper products to consumers. But in this | case, Google is the big corporation, and contributions to | OSM benefit smaller competitors at the expense of Google, | creating more options and more value for consumers overall. | betwixthewires wrote: | As a user of OSM (and having contributed in the past but | that's not relevant to my point) it looks like, to me, that | if their share of edits is growing that _they_ are | providing free labor _to me_ and people like me, no? | burkaman wrote: | Can you expand on how contributions suck economic value | from the community? What community, and what value is being | lost? | mikhailt wrote: | Yes, it is mentioned many times in the article itself; several | paragraphs in fact. | | Here is a few: | | > Apple uses OSM data in parts of the world where their | commercial partners don't provide data. They are reasonably | good at fixing and contributing data to OSM in those regions. | They employ nobody in the OSM community. | | > Microsoft Bing uses OSM in several regions, and is slowly | moving from it's traditional providers to OSM globally. They | provide machine-learning (ML) datasets that they have computed | from areal imagery. They employ nobody in the OSM community. | severak_cz wrote: | Klokantech uses OSM data as a base data for their Maptiler | platform. | | They maintains and contributed to some open source tool and | they are hosting (for free) some open source maps. | warkdarrior wrote: | The post claims both that some companies contribute to OSM and | that they do not employ anyone from the OSM community. | | There is some level of gatekeeping here, as the blog implies is | that that employees at those companies are not part of the OSM | community although they contribute to OSM. | | With this attitude ("no true OSM contributor unless I approve | of"), it is hard to grow the community by welcoming new people. | gumby wrote: | > _They employ nobody in the OSM community._ | | Malone keeps saying this but I don't think it means what he says | it is. | | Those large entities employ _lots_ of people who add to OSM. Not | only do they add content but by his own description they do QC | and add other new features and support. | | Their contributions are no different (except in magnitude) than a | single, tiny contribution I might make, yet presumably that would | make me "part of the community" but not them? | npteljes wrote: | Yes you absolutely should. But, should you expect to make a | living out of it? No. | washadjeffmad wrote: | Google Maps is built on uncompensated user submissions, much of | it involuntary (data from navigation, live and historical | location, etc). | | We aren't their customers, we're the employees. That's why data | ownership is such a verboten topic, it breaks their entire model. | marcodiego wrote: | Should you contribute to yourself for free? | nradov wrote: | My friends and I use a lot of Garmin fitness trackers and bike | computers for endurance sports training. Those devices use maps | derived from OSM. So when I contribute data to OSM for free I | (eventually) see a direct benefit with better navigation on my | devices. | betwixthewires wrote: | > It may be mainly made by individuals in there spare time, but | the big tech companies are making millions of it. | | Dude please proof read. I walk into an article making a statement | and the very second sentence has errors like this, you're losing | credibility. | | > They are reasonably good at fixing and contributing data to OSM | in those regions. They employ nobody in the OSM community. | | Except whoever contributes data to OSM in those regions? The same | for every example in the list. Amazon is literally mapping towns | for all of us and giving it away for free. What's the criteria | for "in the OSM community" if not "contributes to OSM"? What's | the point of FOSS if not this? | KennyBlanken wrote: | > Dude please proof read. I walk into an article making a | statement and the very second sentence has errors like this, | you're losing credibility. | | Your first sentence has punctuation errors, and your second | sentence it littered with grammatical errors... | betwixthewires wrote: | Deliberate, nuance. To get my point across articulated with | my sentiment and attitude about what I'm saying. A similar | approach to the cultural context included in colloquial | dialects. A far cry away from "there" instead of "their" and | "of" instead of "off." | Rygian wrote: | The main difference is that, with OSM, a third party can make | direct commercial profit from my edits, but _so can anyone else | including me_. | thepete2 wrote: | Your edit to google maps is a competitive advantage. Your edit | to OSM is a public utility. | sam_lowry_ wrote: | Google's competitive advantage? | matkoniecz wrote: | Yes, exactly. If someone improves Google Maps then such | contribution is under control and owned by Google. | | If someone improves OSM then such contribution can be used | by anyone - from hobby map maker, through artists, maker of | open source navigation to evil corporations. | bluGill wrote: | I contribute so that friends can find my house. I hope everyone | reads OSM data and updates their maps. Too many people put my | address in GPS and end up several miles away. | maceurt wrote: | I am against any large scale collection of data that can be used | to take away an individual's privacy or to assist a | government/business/person's ability to track someone's location | or residence. Its one thing to not be able to do anything about a | private business collecting this information on their own | volition, but its another to actually aid in its collection | yourself. The more you accept and buy into this reality the | faster it will accelerate out of control with opposition being | not just those who stand to gain from its existence, but from | useful idiots who don't understand sunk cost fallacy. The biggest | hindrance in the long term happiness of the human species is the | inability to reverse change. Even while we can admit a certain | change is bad, we can never mitigate further change let alone put | the cat back in the bag. | throw8932894 wrote: | Privacy ship has sailed long time ago. Try to remove license | plates from your car. Or refuse to share information about your | health! | | Now it is about gate keeping. Young people and startups, need | the same ability as govs and established players. Until | recently you could not even embed maps on your website (too | expensive). Free data are levelling the playing field. | | And if anything OpenStreetMap helps me not to share my | location. I can store map of entire continent offline on my | phone, and do not have to ask remote servers for navigation! | maceurt wrote: | If we created a change we can un-create it. People who just | accept that we are powerless to our past are the architects | of our future hell. | | > I can store map of entire continent offline on my phone, | and do not have to ask remote servers for navigation! | | The fact that you think anybody would need to have that is | ridiculous. And also I can store an entire map of pretty much | any place I need to go to and it doesn't require a phone.... | Furthermore, maps are only necessary in over bloated cities | not designed with facilitating humans as the main objective. | Just because that is where most people live nonetheless does | not make it any more right. | betwixthewires wrote: | I need to store the map of the entire US locally on my | phone, because often, where I want to go has no service | because where I go is very, very rural. If I were to do | this with paper maps it would cost me hundreds of dollars. | As a bonus, I can overlay the map with USGS GIS data and | see all sorts of information about where I'm going, again, | stored locally on my phone. I can tell you right now in | about 30 seconds what federal or state agency manages any | GPS coordinate and how to get there in a car, and if I need | information like that, which I do, I can get it in the | middle of the grand canyon a hundred miles from the nearest | cell tower. | | People _do_ need it. You 're dismissing very, very powerful | tools just to complain that your city isn't walkable, | forgetting that some of us don't live anywhere remotely | resembling a city at all. There's a whole world out here | man. | up6w6 wrote: | Can someone give details about what is the best way to | contribute? Is there some easy way like just installing an app in | my phone and receive popup notifications to answer some quick | questions when I'm in a queue of a random local shop? | Rygian wrote: | Yup, you can install Streetcomplete which does exactly that. | cowsandmilk wrote: | If you're on Android: | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete | mngnt wrote: | Check out StreetComplete. It's basically a map with question | icons that help improve osm. It's even a bit gamified, you get | achievements for a volume of replies :) Importantly, you can | configure which types of question do you get, so you won't get | bored by replying the same stuff again. | | More specialized, but perhaps more important for certain people | is wheelmap.org. It catalogues amenities and their wheelchair | accessibility. It has similar model for contribution as | StreetComplete, you answer question about stairs, door widths | and toilet accessibility. | | Have fun mapping :) | | Edit: corrected autocorrect. | jdavis703 wrote: | Stranger on the street asks for directions: | | I'm sorry, I can't provide directions. I make $80/hour. Spending | a minute giving you directions costs me more than $1 per minute, | so please give me a $1.33 and then I'll tell you where to go. | epaulson wrote: | I've always thought OSM's data license should be more BSD-ish | than the current LGPLish license. If you were trying to privately | build and edit data from OSM, there'd be a pretty strong | incentive to get most of your updates and corrections upstreamed | back into OSM, (especially for things that are broadly of | interest to the rest of the community) because eventually someone | will also create those updates in the upstream OSM, and then | you'll have to deal with how to merge your changes with the OSM | changes. | | I think OSM would benefit more with more people building on the | dataset, because even if a smaller percentage actually | contributed back, they'd make up for it with a larger overall set | of people building on the dataset. And I think they'd get a | larger set of people building on the dataset with a more | permissive license. | | (The obvious counterpoint is OSM is doing just fine with its | current license) | purple_turtle wrote: | Given how BSD was used to create proprietary MacOS and | PlayStation operating systems with basically nothing | contributed back - I am not convinced. | tomarr wrote: | I don't think that's obvious, e.g. an Apple or Facebook could | take OSM and fork it privately and invest all their efforts | into that, without releasing upstream for competitive | advantage. | sovietmudkipz wrote: | I struggle with contributing to open source but in a different | context. In my opinion, the video games industry is information | sparse on high quality software engineering practices, for | whatever reason (NDAs, language/culture, etc). I am already | authoring content that basically imports DevOps practices and | experiences I have from my day job into a video games context. I | believe practitioners have an edge over non-practitioners. Yet I | hesitate to release it. | | I hesitate because ultimately I cannot fully silence my ego. I | want to release my content and have a positive impact on game | creators. I know my ideas and hard work will be taken and | rebroadcast by other teacher content creators without credit. In | abstract that my ideas will spread to a wider audience will | maximize its impact. ...But I want my hard work to be recognized | and credited which is hamstringing my willingness to release. | | My ego wants me to keep this information private and work in a | closed source way. "Ha, I am so smart that I grok this stuff and | can apply it," I imagine my mindset saying. "Look at how these | fools struggle, ignorant of a better way." However; I have | benefited from others making the brave choice to work in an open | source way. | | How do people who give away their work (MIT or CC license) think | about it? I feel like a jerk for benefiting from a culture of | open source and yet I have this inner conflict? | indigochill wrote: | Arguably being more permissive could lead to more recognition. | Lovecraft's mythos probably wouldn't have taken off the way it | did had he been the only one writing it, but he was very | permissive about letting others write their own stories in it | (although I'm still unclear as to how he kept his name so | closely associated with it when there were plenty of other | writers riffing on it). | | In the tech context, if something you make gets a lot of uptake | because a lot of people find it useful, then the spread of the | useful thing could mean more recognition for you. But taking | hold of that recognition will still require extra effort, like | going to conferences to talk about the thing so people can put | a face to the name. | notreallyserio wrote: | I figure I will be forgotten entirely within a generation or | three, but maybe my minor contributions to open source software | will help folks now and in the future solve problems. That | coupled with the fact that I am standing on the shoulders of | giants (whose names I mostly don't know) makes the choice to | release my code freely easy. | | As a bonus, the more eyes there are on my code the more likely | it is that I get good feedback, feedback I use to improve my | skills. | davidjytang wrote: | I'm not a open source contributor in a major way. Just wanted | to chime in. | | No doubt at least part of your know-how, however small, was | built upon others' experiences (also hard to give credit for | everything). If you do release your content, this is just | giving back to the community. | | Also to play with your ego side, let's say some other person | beats you to releasing the content that you wanted to release. | And that person markets well and takes a lot of credit that you | wanted. Would your ego push you to publish sooner? | npteljes wrote: | I think it's important to realize this struggle. You can take a | myriad of approaches to life, to what and how you contribute to | other people's lives. I think that ultimately you'll be taken | advantage of a million times, because you can't really affect | how other people act, but that shouldn't keep you from acting, | if that serves you expressing yourself. So what you should be | concerned about is how much it's actually hurting you or | keeping you from realizing yourself. | | To make this a bit more tangible, you could examine this | stuggle from different viewpoints. | | For example, does it hurt you that some people benefit a lot | from your work, if you otherwise lead a comfortable life? | | Or, would your idea/knowledge be popular if you kept it "closed | source"? Maybe it's popular now and many people benefit, and if | those were paying users, boy, would you be rich. But the | alternative could be that the fantastic knowledge of yours | wouldn't get traction in the first place, leaving you with a | worse outcome, but of course you're not taken advantage of | either. | | I think what you should examine is what would make you feel | like it's worth it to release the knowledge. Does applause | sound nice? You could look into presentation. Do you like | digital feedback like HN karma or youtube subscriber count? | Look into content creation. I think that if you're honest with | yourself about what would make you happy, then that should show | the way. | nz wrote: | I have written some (obscure) open-source software and have | contributed to open-source code-bases. I can say that if you | are doing it for some kind of recognition, then you are doing | it for the wrong reason. I _do_ think that you (and many | others) would be worthy of recognition and appreciation, but | most people are far too busy optimizing their careers and | chasing the dollar to actually invest the time and effort | needed to share some of the spotlight with you. Also, so much | of our (humanity's) software stack is open source that we would | need to share the spotlight with hundreds of people out there. | | Most people write open-source for material reasons -- it lets | them bring some of their own code into a new workplace, with | minimal employer resistance. Also, many people will try to | open-source the tooling they built at work so that they can | then take that tooling with them to a new employer (avoiding | the duplication of effort and potential legal issues). | | All of the open-source code that I wrote for non-material | reasons, I wrote it because I thought it was fun to write, and | I open sourced it because others might find it interesting or | useful. But I never expected any kind of recognition (let alone | compensation). | | In feudal Japan, poets would write poetry anonymously (not | pseudonymously), and many historians and scholars debate which | known poet wrote which poem. The fact that these works of art | are not attached to any author's ego or name, does not diminish | their beauty after all these centuries -- arguably this | characteristic amplifies and elevates the work beyond the | history of people, to the history of ideas and concepts. At the | end of the day, we are just transient conduits for concepts. | The notion that a person deserves to have "more" for their | ideas and concepts and artistry, is as shameful as the notion | that artists deserve to starve for not slavishly serving the | whims of the market. | [deleted] | mulmen wrote: | The rare exception to Betteridge's law of headlines. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-28 23:01 UTC)