Similarly, a lot of charitable organizations that could be releasing data to build on top of the OSM dataset and the tooling that exists, instead create their own data silos. For instance, Sustrans (the cycling charity in the UK), and the Ramblers (the walking/hiking charity in the UK). I get the impression that managers are coming up with ideas for their digital projects without any reference to the technical landscape outside their organization.
I don't know whether there's anything which could be done to help these more corporate charities get on board (for instance to make it easy for them to set up and maintain an official database using OSM tooling, on the basis that the data they gather is publicly available and licensed as open data).
For two UK charities I've worked with, the reason is that they've been tempted by the siren voices of Google.
Google offer a tempting deal to charities: free mapping, and the chance to get your content hosted on Google Maps. So, for example, Sustrans' cycle routes are now integrated into the Google's UK mapping data.
This seems to appeal particularly to the higher-ups. The developers/GIS team may be more au fait with OSM, but when the marketing director says "We have the choice of getting our routes publicised for free on Google, or... what's this obscure 'street map' site you mentioned?", it's hard to convince them. (I did try to persuade one such charity to switch to OSM-backed mapping, but the answer was "Google is a corporate partner of our charity - we can't be seen to switch away from them".)
It's a great shame especially because, as you say, the tooling available around OSM data is so much more powerful than the Google Maps API could ever be. But I'm not too worried: it'll come in time. With OSM powering more consumer-level sites by the day, it's getting easier to answer the marketing director's question.
I have a similar experience regarding choosing OSM over people's go to mapping service (which looks completely free to them because Google doesn't ask them to pay). One way to deal with it is just not taking about the decision when they don't even know all the options. Just make it work and they'll probably be fine with it.
I can explain at least why OSM data is not used because I have been through the process many times. OSM is frequently rejected for reasons having nothing to do with awareness or quality. The licensing makes it unusable for many analytics applications.
There is a de facto prohibition on the blending and derivation using many geo data sets due to licensing restrictions and regulatory requirements, including many government data sets. Even OSM does not have the equivalent of a BSD-like license. In many cases, blending two sets of geo data and doing derivative analytics creates an unresolvable conflict between the individual licensing terms and the requirements of a specific application. Specific to OSM, many popular geo data sets have regulatory restrictions that make them fundamentally incompatible with OSM for many applications where OSM would otherwise be a great data set.
With commercial data set providers, the license is customizable to be appropriate for the regulatory and other requirements of the application. With OSM, you are stuck with an OSM license, which would violate all kinds legal and practical constraints for many use cases. I can say that for many geo applications I've supported, compliance with the OSM licensing would literally be violating the law. Fortunately, commercial data sets are much cheaper than they used to be.
Most interesting products of spatiotemporal analysis that might use OSM data as an input are defined as a derivative database under the OSM database license. The mapping data is enriched and blended with multiple orthogonal data sources (like social media, mobile phone telemetry, remote imaging, etc) to provide a more accurate model of physical world dynamics. I think a big part of the problem is OSM's tacit assumption that the data would only ever be used to make maps. The derived analytical data model is not cartographic in nature, and use cases range from emergency management to consumer behavior.OSM's requirement that the derivative database be publicly and freely available is problematic for several reasons:
- OSM may be a minor input to a petabyte scale derived database, a large percentage of which may be modified every day. Many popular derivations would be technically and economically implausible to make publicly available.
- Jurisdictional restrictions on where the derived database can reside because of the type of data that was used to construct it. Making it available publicly without compliance mechanisms would break the law.
- Regulatory restrictions on the public usage of an input it is blended with, such as PII data like raw mobile network telemetry. Proper compliance mechanisms are often post-derivation and outside the derived database. Again, making the underlying database available without the compliance mechanisms would be breaking the law.
- OSM is the tail wagging the dog for many of these applications. Trying to make the licensing and compliance of complex applications revolve around OSM's requirements is unjustifiable effort. It is the same reason no one adds a little bit of useful GPL code to a million LoC code base even when it would make sense in the abstract.
This is a long-term problem for OSM in that applications are increasingly about getting intelligent answers out of spatial data systems, which implies the above analytical data models, rather than a map that a human is still required to interpret. Commercial cartographic database providers are usually more than happy to write you a license that conforms with the legal and practical requirements of your analytics application.
What is the upside for OSM if it changes licensing terms to be more amenable to those users? You say it is the tail wagging the dog, but you skip over why OSM should even care about capturing those users.
I realize that "funding" is an obvious answer, but I'm not real sure what that is supposed to look like. I also don't think the generic answer would convince proponents of the share a like terms (I'm personally ambivalent about share a like, but it's clear that a big chunk of the OSM community values it).
I wonder, could OSM even change their licensing in that way if they wanted to? Because all the contributors submitted their content under the old license, they'd all have to agree to the new license again, right?
No. Originally OSM was under a CC licence. In 2012, it was changed to the current ODbL licence. All the data from mappers who didn't agree had to be deleted. In order to map now, you have to agree to the "Contributor terms" which means the licence can be changed to any other "free and open" licence with a 2/3 vote of active mappers.
I've been trying to learn the world of GIS for a cycling/pedestrian project I've been working on over the last few months. I'm also working with the local Open Data/Open Government groups. As I've gotten to know the communities I've seen this over and over...even in the Open Data groups.
I've come to the conclusion that it's not malicious (or even 'Not Invented Here' syndrome), but ignorance and a complete misunderstanding of the FOSS world. It seems that a lot of the people and groups involved come from a corporate background where they had to build and keep everything in house. Whenever I mention not reinventing the wheel, building on others work, collaborating with other groups, or opening up our the data I'm met with mostly blank stares. (I could go on and on about this disconnect and why I think it's happening, but it's not directly relevant to your comment.)
I think the major issue is that non-developers (and even some developers) have no idea how to work with others. It isn't that they don't want to or are refusing to, they fundamentally just don't know how to. The idea of working with more than the fifteen people that are present in the room is mind-boggling, let alone the idea of working with people all around they world they may never meet. On top of that simple issue you have the same concerns you do with any person outside the Open* communities: security, trust, liability, etc. Have you ever seen a layperson look at a software/data license? It's beyond overwhelming, so they all go back to whats safe, even if it's not the right thing for their goals or the community as a whole.
To begin to remedy this I think we have a lot of work ahead of us...starting with making the ideas and principles of Openness more accessible to those outside our community.
TL;DR: I believe that silos are a symptom of being ignorant and/or overwhelmed by the Open-anything world.
GIS Manager here. The reason silos happen in the GIS world is because of trust. Every organization has different priorities and standards when it comes to data. The accuracy you need for your building footprints might be (and probably is) unusable for someone else. Data sharing between entities is common but even then oftentimes a great deal of finesse is needed to make another organization's data work in your dataset. In the government sector there is mistrust of data requests from those who would use data for commercial interests so the default option is to charge for it or just make it unavailable.
Another challenge has been that GIS data is historically expensive to acquire. As consumer grade spatial applications have become more popular there has been a noticeable shift to release data for the common good rather than trying to recover the cost of acquisition. Of course there are still plenty of silos out there. The push towards regional datasets for public infrastructure also seems to be gaining momentum but these projects often go nowhere unless they are mandated by a Federal or State agency.
One thing that I've found really helps with this is saying that OSM is "like Wikipedia for maps". These days most people understand what Wikipedia is, how it works, and trust the content. OSM really is like a cartographic Wikipedia...
Just a warning for any other contributors, at the moment the changeset that WheelMap posts to OSM puts a huge bounding box on the map which makes it really hard for other OSM users to see what's been changed.
In practice, though, a lot of other editors also make huge bounding-box edits, to the point where I've found box history basically useless in London even ignoring wheelmap edits. And I'd take having accessibility data over cleaner edit history.
Well there goes my spare time for the next little while - adding all the places I know of in my home town. It doesn't seem to switch to English properly, though.
I don't know whether there's anything which could be done to help these more corporate charities get on board (for instance to make it easy for them to set up and maintain an official database using OSM tooling, on the basis that the data they gather is publicly available and licensed as open data).