Tbf, 90% of all people live in the northern hemisphere where most of the landmass is so you can kinda statistically figure out what they probably meant.
Maybe it's one of those maps without New Zealand :P
You are being too cynical. There's a lot of data outside of open streetmap that complements open streetmap. A lot of that data is open but hard to combine with openstreet maps. And some of that data is owned by companies that are willing to license the data in an open way.
Overture basically is a joint effort by several companies to combine all that data.
Speaking as someone who has worked with OSM data. It's great for maps but severely lacking elsewhere with a lot of incomplete data, poorly/inconsistently tagged data, lot's of regional variation in tagging, etc. All this presents challenges for users of this data wanting to build stuff on top of this data. And there are lots of companies that are replicating efforts to fix this between each other. Been there done that. This is hard, non trivial work.
Overture is an attempt to move on from lots of companies reinventing this wheel to get to a state where there is a decent data foundation to build their applications on.
And they are releasing that data under an open license. So, there's a lot to like here. The process of how this data is produced is not as open unfortunately and it is unfortunate that they are doing this outside of the openstreetmap community.
But then perhaps that community wasn't that welcoming to get such a thing done? Nor have they seem capable or willing to do such work themselves. Overture are clearly working around them and it's worth spending some time reflecting on whether that could have worked differently and what would have had to change on both sides for that to happen.
They seem quite happy to use OSM data. We'll see how this stacks up w/r/t license: from here (and obviously IANAL), it looks very much like "sure, give us all the ODbL data you have, but we're doing a magic trick here, and the end result is not ODbL, hee hee". https://docs.overturemaps.org/release-notes/data-attribution...
That page seems to save that almost all of the data except places IS OdBL and requires attributing OpenStreetMap?
OSM POI data is definitely severely lacking a lot of regions -- so it makes sense why they'd source that from somewhere else. It's also pretty cool that meta and microsoft's POI data is now open -- from look at it, it has the opposite problem of OSM: there are a lot of businesses in it that don't exist anymore or whose info isn't totally accurate -- but it's very usable for certain use cases (and, funnily enough, could certainly form the starting point for a clean up effort -- that COULD then be stuck in OSM and licensed under OdBL).
it seems to be making new map data under a permissive licence instead of openstreetmap's copyleft one, which makes it possible to coopt the work of volunteers
Looks like the only permissively licensed part is the "Places" dataset provided by Meta and Microsoft https://docs.overturemaps.org/release-notes/data-attribution... so the volunteers being coopted are e.g. people who made a Facebook page for their business?
Any new data not in OSM is under a separate dataset and not under a copyleft license, so anyone contributing to that in the future means that their data might be used in a proprietary map.
In general, this seems to be more aimed as a corporate-friendly replacement of OSM where instead of volunteers, its companies with satellite data and phone data and AIs and only the end result is shared, not the process. So you're right that its not really being unfair to the OSM community whose data they seem to only reluctantly want (because it's copyleft) and have kept as such.
I am worried though that if if this gets popular, that OSM will be starved for funding and contributors
> anyone contributing to that in the future means that their data might be used in a proprietary map
But overture doesn’t generally allow the type of contributions OSM allows. There is no volunteer to map out a set of houses or streets. Allowed types of contributions are large mapping datasets, typically of the type explicitly disallowed from being imported to OSM.
The final products will likely be built by or integrated into downstream companies' services.
The Overture Maps Foundation's main aim seems to be to release comprehensive geodata with a consistent structure (schema).
"""Overture is dedicated to the development of reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data that will power current and next-generation map products."""
The data and accompanying schema are primarily oriented toward the developer community and can be found on the Overture Maps Foundation website's downloads and documentation sections.
I think Overture is going to be huge for blind-friendly navigation apps.
Most of these are now either using OSM, which is not that great compared to Google, using Google Maps against Google's ToS and hoping nobody notices, or licensing something proprietary (like Here Maps), with very spotty availability outside western rich countries.
> Production releases are expected to begin in the summer.
Well, that's pretty lousy wording.
Our planet has two completely opposite meanings of when exactly that is. For some of us, it's Dec → Feb. For others, it's definitely not.
Kind of surprised a "global map" company doesn't seem to have picked up on that yet. ;)
rest assured, in any case they are not specifing what year will be.
So effectively this statement is true 50% of the time (whenever there is summer in the northern or southern hemisphere?).
The article starts with “San Fransisco”. It is clear which summer is meant.
I was just continuing the parent comment's thinking - if they don't specify which year it will be, they might also not specify which summer?
Tbf, 90% of all people live in the northern hemisphere where most of the landmass is so you can kinda statistically figure out what they probably meant.
Maybe it's one of those maps without New Zealand :P
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/
When someone says to me "this summer" I tend to think they're meaning the end of the year. For me, that's when summer is.
Many of the websites I visit use that same assumption too. It's the unusual ones (to me) that have a different meaning.
It's not a huge deal or anything, it's just a super idiotic mistake for a "global map" company is all. ;)
Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but is this the "extend" step in "embrace, extend, extinguish"?
You are being too cynical. There's a lot of data outside of open streetmap that complements open streetmap. A lot of that data is open but hard to combine with openstreet maps. And some of that data is owned by companies that are willing to license the data in an open way.
Overture basically is a joint effort by several companies to combine all that data.
Speaking as someone who has worked with OSM data. It's great for maps but severely lacking elsewhere with a lot of incomplete data, poorly/inconsistently tagged data, lot's of regional variation in tagging, etc. All this presents challenges for users of this data wanting to build stuff on top of this data. And there are lots of companies that are replicating efforts to fix this between each other. Been there done that. This is hard, non trivial work.
Overture is an attempt to move on from lots of companies reinventing this wheel to get to a state where there is a decent data foundation to build their applications on.
And they are releasing that data under an open license. So, there's a lot to like here. The process of how this data is produced is not as open unfortunately and it is unfortunate that they are doing this outside of the openstreetmap community.
But then perhaps that community wasn't that welcoming to get such a thing done? Nor have they seem capable or willing to do such work themselves. Overture are clearly working around them and it's worth spending some time reflecting on whether that could have worked differently and what would have had to change on both sides for that to happen.
you are naive to trust this group as stewards
You're not making your point very well by attacking others. Feel free to elaborate on your position instead, though I won't hold my breath
So far it looks like "we've been beholden to the whims of Google Maps for too long, we can try and work together to create an alternative"
> we can try and work together to create an alternative
We can, we have. So are they ignoring OpenStreetMap?
They seem quite happy to use OSM data. We'll see how this stacks up w/r/t license: from here (and obviously IANAL), it looks very much like "sure, give us all the ODbL data you have, but we're doing a magic trick here, and the end result is not ODbL, hee hee". https://docs.overturemaps.org/release-notes/data-attribution...
That page seems to save that almost all of the data except places IS OdBL and requires attributing OpenStreetMap?
OSM POI data is definitely severely lacking a lot of regions -- so it makes sense why they'd source that from somewhere else. It's also pretty cool that meta and microsoft's POI data is now open -- from look at it, it has the opposite problem of OSM: there are a lot of businesses in it that don't exist anymore or whose info isn't totally accurate -- but it's very usable for certain use cases (and, funnily enough, could certainly form the starting point for a clean up effort -- that COULD then be stuck in OSM and licensed under OdBL).
These are for-profit companies. Using OSM might not be an option for various reasons (both legitimate and purely greed-driven)
yeah, I don't love it
it seems to be making new map data under a permissive licence instead of openstreetmap's copyleft one, which makes it possible to coopt the work of volunteers
Looks like the only permissively licensed part is the "Places" dataset provided by Meta and Microsoft https://docs.overturemaps.org/release-notes/data-attribution... so the volunteers being coopted are e.g. people who made a Facebook page for their business?
Any new data not in OSM is under a separate dataset and not under a copyleft license, so anyone contributing to that in the future means that their data might be used in a proprietary map.
In general, this seems to be more aimed as a corporate-friendly replacement of OSM where instead of volunteers, its companies with satellite data and phone data and AIs and only the end result is shared, not the process. So you're right that its not really being unfair to the OSM community whose data they seem to only reluctantly want (because it's copyleft) and have kept as such.
I am worried though that if if this gets popular, that OSM will be starved for funding and contributors
> anyone contributing to that in the future means that their data might be used in a proprietary map
But overture doesn’t generally allow the type of contributions OSM allows. There is no volunteer to map out a set of houses or streets. Allowed types of contributions are large mapping datasets, typically of the type explicitly disallowed from being imported to OSM.
> But overture doesn’t generally allow the type of contributions OSM allows.
this is cyclical.
the data they contribute is generated by people who freely contributed this data to Microsoft et al.
then Microsoft takes ownership of the data, package in their proprietary data sets, and here we are.
Sorry this is beyond your point, which stands correct, I just want to nitpick:
> Allowed types of contributions are large mapping datasets, typically of the type explicitly disallowed from being imported to OSM.
Depends on license. There are mass imports in OSM.
Yeah, they want to sidestep community who was less than happy e.g. with a FB's AI road import in Thailand (described elsewhere on HN).
What do you think is being extended here? OpenStreetMap?
Where can I see the overture maps "final product" in action? Is anyone providing a hosted solution?
The final products will likely be built by or integrated into downstream companies' services.
The Overture Maps Foundation's main aim seems to be to release comprehensive geodata with a consistent structure (schema).
"""Overture is dedicated to the development of reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data that will power current and next-generation map products."""
https://overturemaps.org/about/who-we-are/
The data and accompanying schema are primarily oriented toward the developer community and can be found on the Overture Maps Foundation website's downloads and documentation sections.
https://overturemaps.org/download/
https://docs.overturemaps.org/
I think Overture is going to be huge for blind-friendly navigation apps.
Most of these are now either using OSM, which is not that great compared to Google, using Google Maps against Google's ToS and hoping nobody notices, or licensing something proprietary (like Here Maps), with very spotty availability outside western rich countries.