Jochen Topf – The OpenStreetMap Community #FOSSBack

This talk introduces OpenStreetMap, a collaborative platform for geographical data that allows users from various backgrounds, including individuals, governments, and companies, to contribute equally. The speaker emphasizes the importance of data over software, explaining how OpenStreetMap functions more like a comprehensive database than a traditional map. OpenStreetMap operates on the principle of 'on the ground' data collection, enabling contributors to map based on verifiable facts. The talk highlights the community's flexibility in adapting and evolving the data model to include various types of information, including 3D structures. Additionally, the speaker reflects on OpenStreetMap's role as critical infrastructure for various industries, noting its growing use by major companies and the need for better funding and recognition of its value. The session wraps up with a comparison to Wikipedia, discussing similarities and differences in their operational models.

We're here at the force backstage. Um, and I'm an open source in Vic. I'm a FOS developer. Um, and um, I'm coming sort of from this Fosskis um, organization. So we are doing open source um, development in the GIS space. GIS is a geographical information system. source everything around maps and these kind of things and um uh we are a local chapter of the OSGO the open-source

um uh geo organization US-based organization um and and we're the local chapter for for for Germany Austria and and and Switzerland of that but um although this is a foss event I'm not talking about that what I'm talking about is open street map open street map is Um, also we are also a local chapter of the Open Street Map Foundation. Um, and Open Street Map is not

about software so much but about data. But if if there's one thing we learned from all this AI stuff, um, it is that data is arguably more important than than software or at least as important as software. So um, I wanted to bring this sort of slightly different perspective uh into the discussion here um, at at this event. So, what is the Open Street Map? Um, you've

all seen that. Um, it's a map that you can look on online and it has all sorts of stuff on it. That's sort of I guess that that's what everybody knows. Um, but it's um it's not just a map. Um, it is uh this is a different Open Street Map based map of hiking routes in this case. Um, here's a different one. Um this is um uh

rail railway infrastructure. Um this map was also generated from open street map data. So obvious is not just one map but is many maps. Um it in reality it's more like a it is a database of geo data. Um so this is how it um if everything uh that's an open street map in this area. Um you look at if if you paint this black this is

how it would look like. So sort of so to speak you can see the um uh the um um airport the old um temple of felt here. Um so we're not a map really. We are more like a database. We are really a open platform for to your data because everybody can contribute to to this database. Um and it's a lot of individuals but it's also government.

It's also companies and uh other organizations that contribute uh to open street map to this one platform and everybody can contribute on equal terms. We don't have anything that says okay you're coming from a government so you have official perfect data or something like that. That's not how we operate. Everybody can contribute um on equal terms ideally. Um and we have one sort of important um uh

thing this the organized editing guidelines that help helps us um keep this at least a little bit with these equal terms because you can imagine if a company contributes and they're paying somebody to spend their whole day sitting on the computer and and doing stuff with open street map they have a lot more time they they can do a lot more than an individual can do. Um

so we have at least some guidelines um to limit what companies have to do and there's not a lot of limits but at least they have to they have to um say that they come from a company and we have the openness around around that. So there's one of those um things that's important for us. Open Street Map is a collaborative platform that what I mean with

that is it's not um like in social media where everybody can upload their own uh version of the world. Um we are working together on one single database um and everybody can see and change uh everybody else's data and we um we can only do this work on one thing agree on one thing that we want to put on the map. um with this so-called on the

ground rule which basically says um we uh collect the data about the world as it is to die as you see it outside. Um so if there's some kind of conflict and somebody says there's a letter box there and somebody else says no there is no mailbox there then this then we can go to this place and look at it and then we can agree on it

and in practice this is of course a lot more diff um different but that's at least the idea is we work um with verifiable facts and that is the common ground that allows us to work on one single um one single database Um, Open Streamer is made by and for humans. That's very important to us. We, I mean, we use all this technology. We need satellite images

or aerial images. We the GPS and the smartphones and and of course the internet itself to collaborate. Um, but all this technology is no replacement for human judgment. the common s common sense the the the human experience that decides what's important and what is not important. Um so for us um yes we can import data that comes from some somewhere else and yes we had occasionally cases

where people would use machine learning um and uh to uh to add data to open street mel but I ideally what we always try to do is have some human in the loop who looks at the data and decide what's what's what um and um uh and and bring this human element in there. Um and this um extends not only to you cannot only add the data

to open street map that um somebody else told you you can add but you can add new kinds of data. For instance um open street map itself uh only has x and y coordinates. We only have latitude and longitude. We don't have an height information for the world normally. But people decided that looks boring. we want to have 3D data. So um they fiddled around with our

data model and made it work. And so this data that you see here, this is complete all of that is from open street map data. Um and it um has in this case a sort of 3D model of um the inner city of Dresden. Um and yes all those trees are also in open street map because somebody decided that mapping single trees is important for them and

they started doing that and and they they add information about what kind of tree this is and and whatnot. So people can just decide to do that invent new tags what we call them um to add them uh to the data and they don't have to ask anybody for permission. Um, of course there is process around it that you discuss things with the community and in you

have to get to some kind of common ground. So um that things will appear on the map. Um but still every day people just invent new tags and invent new ways of of mapping things and this flexibility um is is is key to um the open street map experience. So this is a different um example of that. um 15 years ago um a week 15 years and

a week ago there was this devastating earthquake and um and tsunami in Japan. Um you all remember that and um of course the Japanese community wanted to have this devastated area show up on the map that that was important to them at that moment but there was no way of showing there was no category stuff that has been destroyed by the tsunami. um available. So what they

did, they um pretended they tagged it as natural wetland, which of course it's not. It's there's nothing nothing natural and it's not a wetland um just because it's underwater um um through tsunami. Um so they use this so it would show up on the map in in this way, but they also added other information like tsunami damage. Yes, here wetland tsunami to when and they started to

make it clear. So that that is what happening there. So that would al also allows them later to to delete the data again automatically or something. Um so we can react to these kind of things um and um uh bring the things on the map that that are important to people. Um so open stream is an evolving platform. Um users can add new types of data and

contribute that way. Um uh it is obviously kind of obviously a distributed community. The no local knowledge and local motivation to contribute something is really really important. I can't map anything in South America if I'm not there. I can use aerial images. So I can do a little bit but on the aerial images I don't see what the name of the street is or the restaurant or

something. Um and um also for open street map the we also always have a tension between um wanting to have a global map that works the same everywhere in the world. But on the other hand we want to have something that works for the local community and for their needs. And uh it it makes sense that in different countries and different cultures and u people have different

ideas of what they want to bring on the map and show on the map and how to do that. And um uh for us that's one of the sort of ground rules in our community is that local trumps global. If there's a local community that decides they want to do something in a specific way, they can decide that. Um I started out with um that I didn't

want to talk about open source. I have to talk a little bit open source because open stream is also a kind of open source project or it's it's a collection of open source projects. Um we have written an enormous amount of tools. um over the years um editors to edit the data map renderers that turn the data into the maps that you see. Uh routing engines um

that give you na navigation instruction go from here to there. Um there's um four or five routing engines um that the open source community wrote um uh based all of them based on open street map data and um uh some commercial companies um and and governments are taking their data and converting them into the open street map format so that they can use our open source routers.

Um we have search tools uh so that you can enter Paris in in the field and it finds where Paris is in the these kind of things but there's also a lot of behind the scenes tool for for instance quality assurance that finds problems in the map and people can look at them and and on all these kind of things. So um we started this project about

20 years ago. I think it's about 21 years now. Um um and it turns out now that basically everybody is using our data now. And that wasn't really expected. Maybe it was intended, but it wasn't really expected when people started that that uh it would become that popular. Um so there's the big names uh companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, they're all using open street map data and

um because they don't want to give money to Google basically um uh and because the Google is is is is the big player in in town here obviously. Um and um companies like in in Germany DHL um they are planning the routes um the the the for the mailbox for the mail delivery on open stream map data. They have specialized tools to plan that. Um um the

um Alliance Insurance Company, they're selling insurance where um if you always keep to the speed limit in your car and don't go too fast around the corners um uh your insurance um rates go down um and they have a little box in your car that tracks everything that you're doing. They use open stream data for when something does when when when when their customers call them and

say there's something wrong um I wasn't going over the speed limit. Your data is wrong. They say it's not our problem. Open Street Map did that and send them to us. So we're really really happy about them doing that as you can imagine. um or um Deutschean um you have seen our data in some trains you um on every train station has a has a map um

uh from open street map commote is a is uh has something like 80% or 70 or 80% of the German market for outdoor activities hiking uh biking and all that um they're using open street map um of course uh the United Nations um and and um uh hotly humanitarian and open street map team and and also there's many non-commercial sort of um civil um society organizations that

use uh open street map for lots of things. Um I found just in this one source 30,000 open access scientific papers um that mention open street map. Um there's probably more than that um that are not in that specific database. Um so this is this is this is everywhere. It is a public infrastructure um um really um today um and it is I would argue a critical

infrastructure. There's nobody else even remotely doing what we are doing. We we are the only one who have a a free open database uh a worldwide database. There's lots that have like smaller database or smaller areas or for specific types of data. Um there's lots of that but having this global diverse data that with lots of different kinds of data in it um we're the only one

who have that and basically our own the the only competition is Google and Google maps everybody else now if you look around if u look on maps be it on the target show news or whatever it is um all the maps that you see are either Google or they are open street map based in some form. Um some of them are government data. Um but um sort

of right it is is quite often one or the other. Um so uh of course we have have this problem um and uh but it it looks a bit more like this for us. Um uh we have now for good or bad we have this project that everybody is using and we have to figure out how how to work with that and how to interact with the

sort of wider world and the um the society. Um so open stream is part of this digital comments that we have that we are talking about at this conference that that is it's like Wikipedia like um like open source um and I and and I want to talk a bit about that how is it like open source and other things and how not we we've learned a

lot about from other kind of parts of this open um societies and um open digital infrastructure for instance this release early release often and and listen to your customer that Eric Raymond said in the cathedral in the bazaar uh sort of one of the um founding documents of the open source movement. Um every data everything that you change in open street map within two or three minutes

you will see on the map and every and you can get this data at this in in in at that speed for your own map. you can have a map that is only two three minutes behind any change that somebody makes. And this is this is huge. When we started doing that, uh I think it was in 2009 or so. Um nobody had that at that point.

If somebody changed their map, be that Google or some government agency, it it took half a year or something till they you saw updates on on their websites or in their maps. Um and um so this is very important to motivate people. Um also our data uh our license the open database license has this rule NI and GPL. It has very similar idea of um if if

you use our data and you add other data to it, you have to contribute that data back. Um it's a bit more complicated with data than it is m uh mid uh uh with source. um but um as with code um but the idea is very much sort of stolen from from there um but it's also very very different from open source projects our community is much

much larger than I would probably any open source project with um hundreds of thousands of people who are um contributing um to open street map um and much more distributed all over the world um and there's there there's no such thing as a as the the special committer, the maintainer and everything. They they look at all the pull requests or something like that that it doesn't work

that way. Every change goes into the database immediately without anybody looking at it um beforehand. Um Open Streamer is in that way a little bit like Wikipedia. Um there's this one central database uh where everything flows to um and flows out of and everybody can add change uh delete everything and uh all the changes as in Wikipedia are tracked. So I can go back to earlier versions

um uh in at least in theory as in practice it's not quite as easy um and uh I can see who did what change and uh and and all these things. and there's other things which would be very I I I'd be interested in discuss with Wikipedia people or other people is here um that that are here um what is allowed to be in that that has

always or has been a discussions around that in Wikipedia there is this relevance thing um is it relevant and only then can it go to Wikipedia we have this facts on the ground this the on the ground rule that I mentioned And so we are not um usually not mapping things which somebody invents uh or that was was there um 10 years ago or something. and then

there there are differences in sort of how we organize our way. The Wikipedia has the talk pages that are very important for so their internal organization to figure out what they put on the normal pages. Um we have for instance a change set comment. So every change that you do, you can write a comment, what are you doing there? And then other people can comment on that

and say, but that's looks weird. I I think that's wrong. Um, can you fix that or or whatever? And we can have a sort of discuss discussion thread on on those changes. Um, there's one big difference from to Wikipedia. Uh, users experience Wikipedia normally directly through Wikipedia web pages. You go to wikipedia.org org or one of the other web pages and you look at the Wikipedia articles

there. I mean there are other ways of consuming the data but that that's normally what you do. While Open Street Map um not many people go to openstream.org website um uh they have some kind of app that they got from somewhere um and they might not even know that they're using open street map. Um and this has one very important problem for us. We can't put up

a donate bet or we can put up a donate bet donate banner on our web page and we have done that but nobody gives us money because nobody sees it compared to Wikipedia. Uh so that has always been a big problem and it's uh now getting uh to be a problem that Wikipedia will all also have due to AI and people consuming not Wikipedia not directly anymore

but through AI. Um so I have to put the banner here. Um please um if you can support Open Street Map, become a uh corporate member of the Open Street Map Foundation for instance or in Germany we have this um way of becoming a further and a supporter in in in Germany here for our local chapter. Um um and and while we on the topic of Wikipedia

um uh I mean there there's the question how how big is this Wikipedia and and and all that and how big is open stream. difficult to say but I'm trying I try to get some numbers out here so um that that I can compare there um over all language versions of Wikipedia 640,000 um uh uh are active users every month so they do some kind of change

or something um that that is from Wikipedia um data um and about uh 45,000 active users per months in in open street map uh Wikipedia US alone has a budget of aboutund 70 million euros um and a staff of about 650 people. Uh Wikipdia Germany is another 200 people or so. Um and um we have six people being paid by Open Street Map Foundation. So that that

are responsible for running everything for the globe. And three of them are um paid by the sovereign tech fund. Um so many thanks to the sovereign tech fund for giving us this this money. But um uh at the end of the year this will will be gone and um we'll we'll see what happens then. Um so we are kind of underorganized and and underfunded and um part

of that is I think due to this mosher the open streamer foundation have always said we are um supporting but not controlling the open streamer project and why would you pay some uh money to something that's not controlling and where you can't have a controlling influence and that um I think is one problem why people don't want to give money there. So the open stream server foundation

runs servers is the guardian of the license and and trademark uh has a yearly conference and it also is sort of the last back stop in conflict resolution if if there's large scale vandalism or uh if if there's big problem they have the so-called data working group which is policing things but mostly the um community self-organized and most of the stuff happens outside this this core the

opportunity foundation isn't doing much this is all happening out there um And uh for instance the the our organization here in Germany we have also some uh service we have a conference for open source and uh open street map with a thousand um participants this year. Um uh we're doing outreach. We we are planning to do um OSM training. We're getting some um grant money for that.

Uh if if you're interested in helping out with that we we um we'll we have a job um coming up a job offer for that. Um so um open streamup really is more like the internet. There's all these different organizations and lots of individuals who do things. There's no um uh nobody has overall responsibility. Sometimes people come to ask ask me sort of okay who is the

guy I have to talk to who is responsible for this open street map thing but there is no single organization. This is um much more distributed and and um uh yeah um and also one of those things we learned from the open stream of rough consensus and running code if it shows up on the map then you did something right and that's um that's often good enough.

So an open evolving geo database platform for human calibration public infrastructure bit like lots of things but it own thing and also this is a uni a a road that's named after a date um and somebody was interested in that and and um use the open street map data to figure out okay what other streets are there in Europe that are named after a specific date and

they found all these And then they wrote a little he wrote a little program to find out a route that allowed him to travel through all of this. And he traveled around and did created a photograph and created a calendar from it. Um for every date he visited at least one of those sheets. Open stream is also a lot of fun and that's why we are doing

it. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thanks a lot for this important contribution, the talk and the project. Do we have questions? >> Hi, thanks for the talk Wikipedia user. So I'm happy to talk later. But my question is if you got to imagine a collaboration with the Wikipedia, what would your dream collaboration be? >> The dream collaboration with Wikipedia um I think we could learn a lot from

them how to do fundraising and all these kind of things. um uh that that uh would really uh would be interesting and I I am talking to Wikipedia people and and u about uh things like that. Um and they're also using Wikipedia is one of the largest users of uh um Open Street Map. Um so they could help us and contribute some more to that and not

just use it. So that would also be good. Um and um also they could help with outreach because everybody knows our Wikipedia and not everybody knows Open Street Map and what it is and and and and and so on. >> Probably the obvious question has there been a raise in recognition for some uh companies that this is critical infrastructure for them and they would be good in

like supporting you. that that's one reason why I'm giving this talk here because I want to get this message out um how important Open Street Map is and how underfunded it is. Um I'm trying to talk to people and uh usually they all say yeah we don't have the money and uh uh and then the discussion stops or so um yeah the most of these companies don't

realize so for instance the the insurance company I talked to them and said this is your whole business is based on top of this and if you wouldn't have open street map you would have to pay hundreds of thousands of euros every year to somebody like Google and I don't care. >> Maybe you look too professional and nobody realizes that you're just six people. Yes. >> Basically

hired. So I think it's good that you talk about that. >> Hey. Um so I just want to say that I I really love using Open Street Map. I'm one of the people that use it for uh academic research. Um but while using it for academic research, you know, I often find inconsistencies with the data. And what's um what's the best way to sort of get cuz

I I haven't other than correcting typos here and there you know that which is always valuable but what what are some ways in which I can kind of do more substantial uh contributions um to kind of either correcting the data or making kind of amend or like just adding to the database. >> Um how can you contribute? I mean you can of course add to the database

um fix things um and that depends very much on sort of what kind of data exactly you have and you're working with and how how much uh yeah how how sensible that is but also I I one thing I've been trying to been talking to people in academia and thinking okay you are going somewhere to get grant money um for your project and then you're using open

street map for free if you would use a different data source, you would pay for that data source with that grant money. Can we find a way of um giving some of that grant money to open street map um so that we can for instance write better tools that help you validate the data and and and improve the data and um I haven't yet figured out how

to do that but that would I think be an important step to make uh to to realize that this comes for free but it is comes from somewhere and um and we have to contribute to that. One more quick question. >> Um yes. Um I simply would ask uh uh who who is responsible for this uh open street map stuff but um it's uh I would like

to know I'm a blind uh software developer and user and uh is does accessibility play a role in open street map? Who would be responsible for that? This is the uh this these tools that you mentioned are they accessible for blind people but uh if you like we could uh talk about that after the after the talk >> So um so as I said there's nobody responsible

for that. So in that sense, but there's um several projects, there's university projects um that specifically address um accessibilities. There's also community projects. There has been people who have worked on that. For instance, created maps um uh that are are printed in a way that blind people can can read them um through braille or other technologies. Um there's um so so yes there have been efforts but

that's again something that happens out there distributed. You don't have to ask anybody for permission. You can use the data and and create specialized map or specialized apps and um so yes this does happen not in a very coordinated way unfortunately. So I would um love it if um uh civil um um service organization civil organizations would would um sort of take this up and and uh

and and work with open street map on these things. >> Yeah. Thanks a lot for your talk to >> Thank you.