From internet protocols and operating systems, to databases and cloud services, some technology is so omnipresent most people don’t even know it exists. The same can be said about OpenStreetMap, the community-driven platform that serves companies and software developers with geographic data and maps so they can rely a little less on the proprietary incumbents in the space. Yes, that mostly means Google.
OpenStreetMap is the handiwork of Steve Coast (pictured above), a University College London “dropout” (Coast’s own words) who has since gone on to work in various map- and location-related roles at Microsoft, TomTom, Telenav, and — as of today — Singaporean ride-hailing firm Grab.
Coast isn’t directly involved on a day-to-day basis at OpenStreetMap any more, but in a blog post on Friday marking his creation’s 20th anniversary, he acknowledged two preceding success stories from the open source realm that convinced him that something like OpenStreetMap might have legs.
“Two decades ago, I knew that a wiki map of the world would work,” Coast wrote. “It seemed obvious in light of the success of Wikipedia and Linux. But I didn’t know that OpenStreetMap would work until much later.”
While OpenStreetMap is a little like Wikipedia for maps, the comparison with its encyclopaedic counterpart is somewhat superficial. Sure, they are both gargantuan collaborative projects, but there is a world of difference between sharing your geeky knowledge of micronations and mapping out geographic features on a global scale.
Today, OpenStreetMap claims more than 10 million contributors who map out and fine-tune everything from streets and buildings, to rivers, canyons and everything else that constitutes our built and natural environments. The starting point for all this is data derived from various sources, including publicly available and donated aerial imagery and maps, sourced from governments and private organizations such as Microsoft. Contributors can manually add and edit data through OpenStreetMap’s editing tools, and they can even venture out into the wild and map a whole new area out by themselves using GPS, which is useful if a new street crops up, for example.
As sole creator, Coast was the driving force behind all the early software development and advocacy work, eventually setting up the U.K.-based non-profit OpenStreetMap Foundation to oversee the project in 2006. Today, the Foundation is supported primarily by donations and memberships, with less than a dozen volunteer board members (who are elected by members) steering key decisions and managing finances. The Foundation counts just a single employee — a system engineer — and a handful of contractors who provide administrative and accounting support.
OpenStreetMap’s Open Database License (ODbL) allows any third-party to use its data with the appropriate attribution (though this attribution doesn’t always happen). This includes big-name corporations such as Apple and VC-backed unicorns like MapBox, through a who’s who of tech companies including Uber and Strava, the latter tapping OpenStreetMap data for roads, trails, parks, points of interest, and more.
More recently, the Overture Maps Foundation — an initiative backed by Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and TomTom — has leaned heavily on OpenStreetMap data as part of its own efforts to build a viable alternative to Google’s walled mapping garden.
There’s little question that OpenStreetMap has been a success these past 20 years, a success that wouldn’t have been possible without the internet and people’s desire to create something valuable that’s owned by everyone.
“OpenStreetMap managed to map the world and give the data away for free for almost no money at all,” Coast notes. “It managed to sidestep almost all the problems that Wikipedia has by virtue of only representing facts not opinions. If OpenStreetMap is a medium, what is the message? For me it’s that we can go from nothing to something, or zero to one.”
Besides affordability and accessibility, there is at least one other good reason why an open map dataset should exist, and it all comes down to the notion of who gets to “own” location. Should corporate juggernauts such as Google really get to control it all? By any reasonable estimation, a location monopoly is not a positive thing for society.
As OpenStreetMap contributor and free software advocate Serge Wroclawski notes: “Place is a shared resource, and when you give all that power to a single entity, you are giving them the power not only to tell you about your location, but to shape it.”
