OSMAnd+ is the complete solution, and Organic Maps is a young experimental project. I use OSMAnd+ in India and it suffices my needs more than Google Maps did. If you are comfortable with closed source Magic Earth, it could be useful.
…which is precisely why I recommend and use OSMAnd+. I cannot give a shit about 10% more sparkly pretty UI, when OSMAnd+ does the job while looking more or less good enough to me.
Yeah. I love Google Maps and don’t have any plans to stop using it, but it’s always good for consumers to have competition. Monopolies lead to stagnation.
That API doesn’t let you do everything tho, only a number of operations like embed Google Maps on their websites or apps, perform geocoding operations, get directions, and more.
It doesn’t give you direct access to the database!
If the license is compatible with the one used by OSM contributors can use the data to make their life easier, contributors of the dataset are encouraged to contribute directly to osm if possible.
Licence is compatible, but data they have is of…questionable quality…to say at least. For example, I think building dataset is Odbl and I think it contains ML-detected buildings. These got released years ago (becase they had to release it as OdbL to mix them in their maps). Rarely who imported these buildings in OSM as there are lot pf false positives and what not. So, just because they released something under odbl/cdla doesn’t mean it is good for OSM and that it could be imported (for example speed profiles, if we ever get real gold data). Overture is more of a playground for big tech to play without OSM telling them what is good and what is not
Overture is a data-centric map project, not a community of individual map editors. Therefore, Overture is intended to be complementary to OSM. We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets. Overture data will be available for use by the OpenStreetMap community under compatible open data licenses. Overture members are encouraged to contribute to OSM directly.
I don’t know a lot about any of both projects, but it seems fair.
All companies are forced to play nice when they aren’t at the top. Google has a monopoly on mapping, their only real competitor is TomTom, and really only in the US. All of these companies need mapping data and don’t want to pay google for it, so it makes sense to work together to release this.
It makes sense; OSM is a great source of mapping data, but it misses POIs like businesses and whatnot. If I understand it correctly they all want to chip in to make a huge combined dataset that has the potential to rival Google Maps, especially if they all use it and allow people to contribute as easily as you can do on Google Maps.
Overture maps does not contribute in any way to OSM by using it. It just takes its data, and provides it at an alternate place. Just as I do not contribute to the development of Windows and Linux by using them.
It wouldn’t. It’s an open set of data that anybody can use. These companies can, and likely will, create their own map tools that will track users, but they just as easily could have done so using OSM.
Sounds like you don’t actually know much about it. This is a map dataset, they have no way of tracking people once it is independently implemented. They also could have just released a map app using OSM and collected data from that, there was nothing stopping them.
They explained in their FAQ why this is a separate project:
Overture is a data-centric map project, not a community of individual map editors. Therefore, Overture is intended to be complementary to OSM. We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets. Overture data will be available for use by the OpenStreetMap community under compatible open data licenses. Overture members are encouraged to contribute to OSM directly.
Totally understandable. I don’t want to come off like I was well read on this, I was definitely jumping to a conclusion based on the companies involved.
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