alt Hacker NewsMany longtime OSM mappers like myself are acutely aware of various corporations making big bucks on the back of our volunteered time and effort. Often times without contributing anything. Recently made worse by horrible API abuses.
I get why people might not be motivated to join us in the tragedy of the commons.
Replies
soperj • today at 3:32 PM
Why doesn't OSM have a separate price for corporate users of their data? ie: a company with above a certain number of employees pays more
mycall • today at 2:13 PM
How many of the OSM mappers work for government agencies? Curious as they should be a reliable data source.
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bulbar • today at 3:00 PM
Isn't there a solution to that like dual licensing or restricting free API access for corporations?
jmspamerton • today at 2:15 PM
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It is not that the they make money, but the problem is that corporations with huge budgets can overshadow the volunteer run packaging of the said projects and eventually become the canonical way of using them.
Then the project loses visibility to end users. I don't know if that is worth the occasional commercial contributions from them to satisfy their own requirements.