OpenStreetMap Should Be a Priority for the Open Source Community

Why open source needs an open geographic dataset.

Open source has won. The fact that free software now dominatespractically every sector of computing (with the main exception of thedesktop) is proof of that. But there is something even more importantthan the victory of open source itself, and that is the wider success ofthe underlying approach it embodies. People often forget just how radicalthe idea of open, collaborative development seemed when it appeared inthe 1990s. Although it is true that this philosophy was the norm inthe very earliest days of the field, that culture was soon forgottenwith the rapid rise of commercial computing, which swept everythingbefore it in the pursuit of handsome profits. There, a premium wasplaced on maintaining trade secrets and of excluding competitors.But the appearance of GNU and Linux, along with the other open softwareprojects that followed, provided repeated proof that the older approachwas better for reasons that are obvious upon reflection.

Open, collaborative development allows people to build on the work ofothers, instead of wastefully re-inventing the wheel, and it enables the bestsolutions to be chosen on technical, rather than commercial, grounds.The ability to work on areas of personal interest, rather than on thoseassigned by managers, encourages new talent to join projects in orderto pursue their passions, while the non-discriminatory global reach ofthe open method means that the pool of contributors is much larger thanfor conventional approaches. However, none of those advantages is tiedto software: they can be applied to many fields. And that is preciselywhat has happened in the last two decades, with the ideas underlyingfree software producing astonishing results elsewhere.

Arguably one of the most important knock-on effects of freesoftware is the open nature of the World Wide Web. In his book,Weavingthe Web, Tim Berners-Lee writes that he originally wantedto release his creation under the GPL and decided in1993 to place it in the public domain only because key computingcompanies indicated that they wouldn't support the original idea.Alsoinfluencedby Richard Stallman's work is Paul Ginsburg, who setuparXiv.org in 1991 asan open repository of scientific preprints. This idea ofunrestricted sharing of academic knowledge later gave rise to theopen accessmovement. Similarly, the GNU project's concepts and even namefedinto Nupedia, the little-known precursor to Wikipedia. The latter'sopen collaborative approach has been so successful, it's hard toimagine modern life without this extraordinary resource.

Those are all major projects that are familiar to many people. Butthere'sanother applicationof the core ideas of openness and collaboration that is not as wellknown as it should be:

OpenStreetMap is a world-wide collaborative project aimingat providing free map data, under an open license, to anyone who wantsit. Volunteers all over the planet contribute their local knowledge andtheir time to build the best map ever.

OpenStreetMapbegan in 2004. It was inspired by Wikipedia, andit took off thanks to Linux, as its creator, Steve Coast,explainedin 2014:

I gave a lot of talks. Linux user groups used to be verypopular—people getting together on a Saturday afternoon to talk aboutLinux. They already knew half the story because they knew about opensource and they knew about computers and data. So it wasn't too hardto explain what OpenStreetMap was doing.

Despite its low profile, OpenStreetMap is arguably one of the mostimportant projects for the future of free software. The rise of mobilephones as the primary computing device for billions of people, especiallyin developing economies, lends a new importance to location and movement.Many internet services now offer additional features based on where usersare, where they are going and their relative position to other membersof social networks. Self-driving cars and drones are two rapidly evolvinghardware areas where accurate geographical information is crucial. All ofthose things depend upon a map in critical ways, and they require large, detaileddatasets. OpenStreetMap is the only truly global open alternative tobetter-known, and much better-funded geodata holdings, such as Google Maps.

The current dominance of the latter is a serious problem for freesoftware—and freedom itself. The data that lies behind Google Mapsis proprietary. Thus, any open-source program that uses Google Maps orother commercial mapping services is effectively including proprietaryelements in its code. For purists, that is unacceptable in itself.But even for those with a more pragmatic viewpoint, it means that opensource is dependent on a company for data that can be restricted orwithdrawn at any moment.

There is a more subtle problem with using a proprietary dataset. Freesoftware is inherently about freedom because it allows users to do whatthey wish with a program. Proprietary code, by contrast, is underthe control of the company that produced it, which means its usersare subject to any constraints that are built in to the software:"Code is law", as LarryLessig famously wrote. It is the same with mapping data and services.If the dataset and mapping software are proprietary, they come with theconstraints and biases of the company that created them built-in, andthey are impossible to circumvent. This might mean certain businesses arehighlighted in an area because they have paid to be given preference.Services that help users find optimum routes also may be biased insocially harmful ways—for example, avoiding districts that the mapprovider deems "unsuitable".

The lack of a wider appreciation of the importance of OpenStreetMap tothe future of open source is bad enough. But the situation seemsto be even worse if a recent post by a long-time contributorto the project is correct. Serge Wroclawski worked on theOpenStreetMap project for around eight years, and he helped set upOpenStreetMap US,a nonprofit organization dedicated to OpenStreetMap in theUnited States. In 2014, he wrote a widely discussed article"Whythe world needs OpenStreetMap", which explores manyof the points mentioned above in greater detail, and withgreater authority. It's well worth reading, as is hislatest exploration of OpenStreetMap, ominously called"WhyOpenStreetMap is in Serious Trouble". As he writes:

While I still believe in the goals of OpenStreetMap, I feelthe OpenStreetMap project is currently unable to fulfill that missiondue to poor technical decisions, poor political decisions, and a generalmalaise in the project. I'm going to outline in this article what Ithink OpenStreetMap has gotten wrong. It's entirely possible that OSMwill reform and address the impediments to its success—and I hope itdoes. We need a Free as in Freedom geographic dataset.

Leaving aside the political issues Wroclawski raises, one key point toemerge from his critical examination of OpenStreetMap's current status isthat there are significant opportunities for the Open Source community tohelp take OpenStreetMap to the next level. Assuming Wroclawski's analysisis correct, there are plenty of ways programmers could helprectify some of the deficiencies of the project he identifies. In theprocess, they could tackle exciting and worthwhile new coding challenges.It often seems that many of the major free software projects have reacheda slightly boring maturity, with all that this implies for offeringsufficient incentives for people to join. The world of mapping, bycontrast, has the potential to provide ambitious coders with the scopeto make their mark in a new field of interest to billions of users.

So far, OpenStreetMap has spawned only a limited range offreesoftware tools, and it badly needs many new ones if it is to matchproprietary offerings. That's a relatively straightforward task.Much harder will be creating open versions of online services likeGoogle's Waze, which describes itself as"the world's largest community-based traffic and navigation app". Doingso will require working with well-funded organizations—perhapstheMozillaFoundation—or with open-source companies likeCanonical, since the investmentrequired will be considerable.

Although undoubtedly difficult, creating high-quality map-basedservices is a challenge that must be tackled by the Open Sourcecommunity if it wants to remain relevant in a world dominated by mobilecomputing. The bad news is that at the moment, millions of peopleare happilysending crucialgeodata to proprietary services like Waze, as well as providingfreebug-fixes for Google Maps. Far better if they could be working withequal enthusiasm and enjoyment on open projects, since the resultingdatasets would be freely available to all, not turned into corporateproperty. The good news is that OpenStreetMap provides exactly theright foundation for creating those open map-based services, which iswhy supporting it must become a priority for the Open Source world.

Glyn Moody has been writing about the internet since 1994, and about free software since 1995. In 1997, he wrote the first mainstream feature about GNU/Linux and free software, which appeared inWired. In 2001, his bookRebel Code: Linux And The Open Source Revolution was published. Since then, he has written widely about free software and digital rights. He has ablog, and he is active on social media: @glynmoody onTwitter.