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Serge Wroclawski, a long-time contributor to OpenStreetMap, has posted a criticism of the management choices he believes are preventing the OpenStreetMap Foundation from fulfilling its mission (much like the Wikimedia Foundation):
I feel the OpenStreetMap project is currently unable to fulfill that mission due to poor technical decisions, poor political decisions, and a general malaise in the project. I'm going to outline in this article what I think OpenStreetMap has gotten wrong. It's entirely possible that OSM will reform and address the impediments to its success- and I hope it does. We need a Free as in Freedom geographic dataset.
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OpenStreetMap May be in Serious Trouble
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Did you move a lot of KOREAN STEAK KNIVES this trip, Dingy?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:31PM (10 children)
OpenStreetMap is a terrific idea, but it's terrible in everyday use. Frequently old information and some areas are just completely unmapped. I know that I'll take some heat for this, but for everyday use I prefer Bing Maps. It's the one Microsoft product that shines, IMO. The areal images look crisp with a high amount of color in comparison to Google Maps.
But hey, here's at least one point in OpenStreetMap's favor: It's not Apple Maps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:58PM
Google Maps works great for me. It has seamless mass transit and biking directions. I don't even look at the areal images; I might check Street View occasionally to identify landmarks for biking.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:18PM (5 children)
I'm a Microsoft hater, but I have to admit that Bing Maps is definitely prettier than Google Maps. Google Maps badly needs a style update.
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:30PM (1 child)
Google Maps needs a friggin' speedup.
If I have to search (or need to check foreign countries with non-latin names), I use Google maps.
But if I want to check a map (roads and trails), OpenStreetMap is an order of magnitude faster.
Every version of Google Maps adds bloat and slows down. e.g. Defaulting to 3D for the sat view is a giant waste of bandwidth, CPU and time.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday February 22 2018, @09:20AM
I was wondering why Google Maps had seemed to have gotten so slow. I remember being able to "drive" down a highway, almost realtime, with Google, whereas now I can only move so far, and wait so long before it re-renders. Forget "flying". Its almost like back on dialup.
So I use this thing like I used to use dialup. Pick something, wait for it to render. But, unlike a few years ago, I have a lot more things to pick from. Quantity of available info is through the roof. But getting it down is slow as molasses. Yet I have no trouble viewing the HD Youtube stuff until the ads come through... sometimes the dual HD streams of both ad and content will overload my older 2.3GHz single-core celeron.
My boss finally ditched his AT&T connection, that was advertised as being super-fast, but in practice often slower than dialup on a 33.6K modem, and got some sort of high speed connection from Spectrum. My CPU will peg now far before the Network limiting kicks in.
I do like the increased amount of info available, but I was hoping by now, I should have the capacity of "driving" anywhere, realtime, seeing on the screen about what I would have seen through the windshield. I am nowhere close to that.
Tourist with polaroid is more like what I get.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @05:33PM (2 children)
Yeah, google should make it all flat looking and hard to use like their other products.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:42PM (1 child)
Have you tried Bing Maps? It's actually attractive.
Yeah, their OS looks like total shit with that "Metro" interface and all, and really looks rather garish IMO, but Bing Maps isn't like that.
Now this doesn't mean that Bing Maps is actually more useful or functional or has better data, I'm just commenting on the aesthetics. I just looked at my local area on it (I don't normally use it), and while it's prettier than Google Maps, it's missing a bunch of details, such as a nearby rail-trail, a nature preserve, various businesses, etc.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by damnbunni on Wednesday February 21 2018, @11:12PM
The worst part about Bing Maps is that it killed Microsoft Streets and Trips.
S&T was a much more complex program with a lot of features most people would never need, but if you needed them, now you're just hosed.
Since Garmin bought Delorme and killed Street Atlas, the only real alternative now is something like Maptitude which certainly does the job, but it's $700.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @06:36PM (1 child)
And Google maps took over a year to fix a bus stop location, after 18 months still doesn't have the new lake and worse if you search for its name leads you to a completely different lake, and is generally crappy for foot paths.
I don't doubt your experience, but for me OSM is generally miles ahead of Google.
(Score: 2) by isj on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:32PM
There is definitely some weirdness in google maps. I am/was a google maps contributor.
One day I noticed that the street address of where I used to work had moved 2km. Not the building but the actual address. It seemed that some unrelated business had randomly moved the address' physical location. And there was no way for me to correct it. And no way to unapprove the change. An no clear way to find out who the incompetent approver was or where to report it.
Another time I saw that new street addresses had popped up on a bare field nearby, and one old address had moved there too. No signs of what had happened in revision history. Any no way to correct it.
Yeah, footpaths are generally not that great in google maps, even though I know the source data has it (gst.dk). My favorite example was once I found a one-way sidewalk. Turns out that google maps ties the sidewalk to the associated road, and when one diretion on the road is closed for roadwork it affects the sidewalk too (incorrectly).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @10:28AM
Around here, Bing Maps still shows - and routes along - a road that was closed decades ago. Even though I used their error reporting tool to point that out years ago.
When a new motorway was opened, Google Maps showed it, but it took months before it would use it for routing.
OpenStreetMap, on the other hand, is very detailed, and the motorway in question switched from "under construction" to a routable road the same way it opened.