This seems to be attacking a strawman. The original comment was bemoaning the duplicated effort instead of cooperation amongst parties.
If you had a single company, you wouldn't have 10 teams doing the exact same job. The competition here isn't fruitful because so much of the work is shared. Competition is more effective when there is a diversity of approaches.
And how many approaches do you think there are in mapping? Street View, satellite, 3D modeling from airplane flights, manual mapping, etc. These are all different approaches being used more or less by all players.
Think about how mapping was done before Google. Competition is exactly why we have Google Maps, and why Google Maps is continuously improving, instead of just sitting on its advantage.
Not only competition here has been extremely fruitful, it has made maps freely available to consumers.
Do you remember how much the TomTom app used to cost?
It seems like we are talking about different things. No one is arguing that there shouldn't be multiple map interfaces, but rather that if the data was shared, you could have more investment in the interesting parts.
I'm glad that Nvidia and AMD compete to build better graphics chips, I'm also very glad they both work with a shared, cooperative standard (PCI-E) so I can plug them into my computer. They've chosen to compete on some areas and cooperate in others.
The parents are suggesting, hey, wouldn't it be nice if _everyone_ contributed data to OSM, and then competed on providing the best interface on top of that, rather than constructing data moats. Is it realistic that Google would do this? Of course not. But if 10 companies are all constructing their own data completely independently, that's an awful lot of duplicated work that could be avoided.
> It seems like we are talking about different things. No one is arguing that there shouldn't be multiple map interfaces, but rather that if the data was shared, you could have more investment in the interesting parts.
Data is the interesting part. And it needs more investment. Data is the valuable part. UX has very little relevance here.
Companies are competing on what matters and what gives them a competitive edge. Map UX doesn't. Map data does.
^^ This. Competition in this way shakes out inefficiencies inherent to an approach that would otherwise linger and soak of resources the the dynamics of path dependence.
I've worked on OSM, AFAIK I've got nothing back from having done so other than learning a little about maps.
Your position is flawed, because you're focussing on a single element of a social system. If I invest in mapping, it doesn't remove resources, it improves them for everyone. Without the waste of resources of solely profit-driven activity then we have ample resources to meet basic needs and develop technologically too.
No, I don't yet know how such a system can work. I've been working on it ... transition is the biggest problem and the one I've been addressing. At some point I hope it will benefit us all as a species - probably at a financial loss to me and many others.
"Time from volunteers" isn't enough to buy satellite images, cars with cameras, airplanes with cameras, etc.
We're not talking about a bunch of people pitching in some time as they feel about doing it, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars (probably more) spent on this.
But, as you wouldn't invest your retirement funds in such a company, why would you expect others to do so?
We, humans, currently spend the resources on those things through the medium of fiat currency. Remove the necessity for profit, the need to pay a lot of people in that system incredibly more than they require - take a couple of dozen 8-figure mansions, a few 9-figure yachts, several hundred 6-figure cars, gold-plated taps, diamond-encrusted tiaras, etc., etc., and the resources targeted at the problem of producing maps go much further. And there's no reason not to have a competitive element, you don't need profit to create competition.
It's not spending people's retirement, it's spending the same resources we spend now, just not mediated in the same manner and without the waste of 40% spend on advertising (plucked that number out my ass but a few years ago pharma was spending more on advertising than on R&D) and without allowing controlling elements to steal all the output for personal gain.
So, I'd like to spend the equivalent resources we do now, but with saving on profit, over-paying wages, and de-duplication of effort. That gives much more resources applied to the actual task without touching pensions (which of course I'd like to see have the same effect).
The problem, is that moving to such an economic system requires the most greedy, most powerful, to be usurped. Humans are greedy (myself included), that leads us to waste so, so, much of our resources.
Why do you think a system where people choose the collective good (having all their needs met) - "volunteering" - rather than personal financial gain can't produce satellites, or any other good/technology we now produce?
> And there's no reason not to have a competitive element, you don't need profit to create competition.
This is where you're getting things wrong. We need competition to advance. Resources are limited and we compete for those resources. Competition is a resource-allocation system.
Sure, you can advocate for a centrally-planned pipe dream as much as you want, it doesn't work. It has been tried many times before, to horrendous results every single time.
> Why do you think a system where people choose the collective good (having all their needs met) - "volunteering" - rather than personal financial gain can't produce satellites, or any other good/technology we now produce?
For the same reason that unicorns can't fly: they can't even exist.
Would you invest your retirement savings into a company that plans to return no profit by mapping the world and releasing the data for free?
I thought so.