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Comment by krick | Hacker News Reader

Uh, ok, but for those who never heard of Mapillary, what does that actually mean? Is it still something notable, even though we don't see it? I mean, Facebook buys tons of stuff, it's not always clear how a particular acquisition is interesting.

FWIW, "Mapillary’s involvement in OpenStreetMap" part doesn't explain to me what this stuff really has to do with OSM either.

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Honestly, no-one knows but Mapillary and FB. Given that FB is starting to enter into the maps arena with Google, Apple, etc I wouldn't want to know the sort of stuff that FB could do with it.

It's too easy to think about the ugly side of this 'incredible journey' than it is to think about any good that will come out of this due to FB being 'FB'.

Mapillary is basically the Google Street View part of OSM. There are a couple of other street view offerings though.

Given that Google Maps was mainly built directly from street view (and gps) this is important.

Additionally, recently, both fb and mapillary were using ML tech on images and maps to extract info for a kind of automated mapping.

Though it's not "part of OSM" - it's an entirely separate project (set up as a VC-funded commercial entity, rather than a non-profit Foundation like OSM). It does allow OSM to use its imagery and API for mapping purposes.

That "part of OSM" describes the good relationship the OSM community had with Mapillary up until this moment.

Also I'm quite sure if they hadn't "allow" OSM to use its images, their photo database would have been much smaller.

Facebook uses OpenStreetMap for many map displays so they may have an incentive to improve OSM and continue maintaining the good relationship between Mapillary and OSM. Facebook has contributed tools to OSM before, e.g. the RapiD editor [1], though I don't think they are used much.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/RapiD

I'm not sure how this is related to the comment before but what do you think would happen if Facebook started misusing data of Mapillary for example? Do you seriously think OSM would "lock them out" or something?

Not possible. FB can use OSM data to build their own maps like everybody else does.

Exactly.

This is why this argument falls flat.

If FB plans to do shady stuff with Mapillary, they will and there is nothing anybody can do about it...

Ish. If Facebook violate the OSM licence, then that's illegal and something could be done about that. Though the OSMF would never be able to seriously legally sue Facebook. One side has considerably more money than the other.

But if Facebook abided by the OSM licence, but did things the OSM community really didn't like, the OSM project could shun them. Not accept sponsor ship, block FB's RapiD software from making map changes, eject them as a corporate member from the foundation, etc. They'd still be able to use the data, but they'd be a persona non grata.

So in short:

Nothing would hurt Facebook at all.

Some efforts like this, https://mapwith.ai/

Not sure I understand, google maps predates street view by many years and the street view becomes obsolete quite quick.

Doesn't seem that important (for maps).

Yes, but how good was Google maps back then. I use Mapillary to e.g., add speed limits to OpenStreetmap.

One-ways streets, road surfaces, sidewalks, lighting, oneways, shops and restaurants, turn restrictions, max heights below bridges, etc, are stuff that to a large extent come from Mapillary.

It was fantastic!

Driving wasn't available and that is what I would miss the most. But it isn't dependent on street view either.

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