Hello, I'm the OSM Foundation chairperson. Indeed, we benefit from the support of corporate donors, and their contributions are immensely valuable. This support often aligns with mutual interest in free maps, and sometimes extends to participation in working groups, such as the communication or licensing working group.
What sets OpenStreetMap apart from other map or data providers is its diverse and rich community. You're right that relying solely on a few large corporate donors could lead to challenges in maintaining OSM's strength, resiliency, and independence. That's why we're trying to attract a diverse income stream, including a broad base of support from individual donors. Every small donation reaffirms that OSM will remain a collective effort, which all contributors play a part in shaping and preserving.
even if it does, a bunch of accessible data you can develop with is a godsend. Even if it were a completely commercial service, i'd still be happy to have some competition over the couple of monopolies that are left in this space.
I'm just hoping it doesn't turn into the Wikimedia Foundation, yearly begging for substantial funds whilst its many thousands of diligent contributors continue to work under the impression that they're doing a public good, but instead are enriching someone else's product
Wikimedia has about 350 employees. OpenStreetMap foundation afaik 2: one remote office admin and one system administrator. No offices. It’s very lean budget wise.
Hi, I'm the OpenStreetMap Foundation chairperson. We have one employee (our site reliability engineer), one external admin assistant, one external developer for the iD editor, and one external bookkeeper. We do indeed run very lean, thanks to our amazing volunteer community.
Hi from the OpenStreetMap Foundation chairperson. We have one employee (our site reliability engineer), one external admin assistant, one external developer for the iD editor, and one external bookkeeper. The "8" on that site probably counts the board of directors, who are seven volunteers.
Maybe one would prefer to enrich those with limited resources like students and low-income people, without economically enriching a bunch of elites encroaching some non-profit organizations.
This also comes up regularly and I believe it is completely mistaken: wikipedia does ask for more funds than necessary, which is actually a sane tactic when you can never know what will happen a year later and when you don’t have any other kind of income.
Also, how is it not public good, and how does it enriches someone else’s product? I’m fairly sure the world’d biggest encyclopedia that is freely available to anyone on the Earth can be considered a public good, can’t it?
The two are not mutually exclusive. It's not like corporations are paying the Wikimedia Foundation to deprive others of your contributions. And you are also benefiting from the fruit of corporate donations.
Now worries. OSM have open data. Just mirror PBF files. Once something bad happen to OSM itself, you can easly respawn new instance. All building blocks are open source.
That was also the first thing that came to my mind, but then I realised the same goes for Wikimedia
The power is in the brand/execution, not the code/idea
Either way, I'm glad that it's both open data and open code (Wikipedia: creative commons; OpenStreetMap: open database license; both: some open code license) so that we at least have options, should it be necessary, even if it's an uphill battle to divert attention from a spoiled brand
What sets OpenStreetMap apart from other map or data providers is its diverse and rich community. You're right that relying solely on a few large corporate donors could lead to challenges in maintaining OSM's strength, resiliency, and independence. That's why we're trying to attract a diverse income stream, including a broad base of support from individual donors. Every small donation reaffirms that OSM will remain a collective effort, which all contributors play a part in shaping and preserving.
https://supporting.openstreetmap.org is our fundraising site.