Stop Google's Exploitation of Open Communities | Hacker News Reader

Stop Google's Exploitation of Open Communities

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103 pointsnym28 comments

Some brief background…

Google Map Maker is a map crowd-sourcing project which was originally targeted at countries with poor commercial map coverage. It produces a closed end product [0].

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a map crowd-sourcing project which produces an end product with an open data license.

Advantages of Map Maker include that Google can create maps derived from commercial satellite imagery products, Google has better mapping infrastructure, and maps are eventually integrated into Google Maps.

Disadvantages of Map Maker include a closed data license, restrictions on use (for example, no competing with Google), and a more opaque editing process.

Meanwhile, OSM has an open license (albeit a controversial one) and a broad contributor ecosystem. For example, Yahoo! has been generous in hosting satellite imagery for use by OSM for crowd-sourced mapping.

The OSM community has also been particularly involved in creating maps in disaster and humanitarian situations, such as after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

After the Haiti earthquake, there was some controversy over whether to use Map Maker and OSM among aid groups, NGOs, etc. [1] The restrictions on use of Map Maker data was a key concern.

[0] http://www.edparsons.com/2008/06/what-map-maker-is-is-not/

[1] Background: http://geosquan.blogspot.com/2010/01/haitian-earthquake-emph...

Given this and their recent decision keep Honeycomb closed-source (albeit temporarily), one might draw a conlusion that Google only embraces open source so they can leverage it for business advantage.

Not saying that's the way it is - but it's important to keep in mind that they are not always the 'do no evil' company so many blindly accept them to be.

He needs to async load this script:

   http://friendfeed.com/embed/badge/mikelmaron . . .

It took 4s to load, and the page was unreadable until it did.

also, is anyone still using ff?

[edit: 'ff' meant friendfeed, thought it was clear from context]

Firefox 4 is incredible, it's finally on par with Chrome but with all the great addons. Tons of people still use Firefox.

I believe 'ff' was referring to FriendFeed not FireFox.

It's definitely still in use to some extent--anecdotally, my feed still bustles with life. It has always been a rather niche community.

The rant to information ratio was too high--I'm not quite sure what he's complaining about.

he's complaining that the communities that do much of the work end up losing the rights to the data.

We don't use OSM data on google maps.

OSM data isn't the issue. It sounds like Google is asking people to submit map data for free, then claiming ownership of that data.

This is exactly the problem. Google is not only asking people to submit map data for free, but basically giving the impression that the project itself is 'free' when in fact the people that submitted the data cannot use it 'freely'.

Arguing that Google stole the idea of 'Mapping Parties' seems a bit silly. Claiming that OSM invented the idea of 'Mapping Parties' is even more ridiculous than claiming that Apple invented the term 'App Store'.

The argument that MapMaker is harmful to open source efforts has a bit more merit. With MapMaker users contribute mapping information for free without the ability to actually make use of that data later on. OpenStreetMaps on the other hand provides a Creative Commons license for all of the map data.

Regardless of who actually invented mapping parties, I felt that Google grabbing the idea and using it to promote it's closed community was really an example of his main thesis.

Imagine if Google held code sprints for it's commercial products and enticed people with t-shirts and bottled water, keeping their work for commercial use? Wouldn't you rather have those people participate in an open source project so that their volunteered time could be used by all rather than just Google?

"They are specifically targetting govts and NGOs, offering to “map their country for free”, but keeping the results."

The problem is they're directly copying open data communities, and restricting the resulting data.

Mikel is a very prominent member of OpenStreetMap, which was largely credited with the mapping of Haiti after the earthquake. It may come off as a rant on first read, but he's not making exaggerated claims.

"The problem is they're directly copying open data communities"

Could you clarify that a bit for me please? It was unclear to me in the original as well. Is Google copying the data generated by open communities, then closing it with a restrictive license? Or is it copying the idea of community-generated maps?

One's an interesting story worth discussing. The other is silly; community-sourced maps is a fairly obvious idea.

They are only copying the idea of a crowdsourced map.

I believe the problem is more like using their weight as a company to "steal" resources (volunteers, data from governments and what not) from the open initiative to generate a product that is closed.

Seen from that point of view and taking into account that Google has a history of censoring maps, I think it's not that silly an argument.

OSM doesn't own volunteer time. If the volunteers find Googles platform & terms more pleasing, then more power to them.

However, if the original article is correct in that Google misleads volunteers, then I hope his post helps correct that.

why are you accusing them of claiming they own volunteer time?

if someone has huge visibility, they can leverage it to gain more volunteer time at the expense of competing on platform & terms.

The idea of community sourced mapped didn't originate with OSM either. Like any good open source project, we freely credit our inspirations and direct sources. Google however has lifted so many ideas with complete denial of any deep conceptual connections. It only seems proper to acknowledge your influences.

However the real problem is how G glosses over the particulars of their business practices, and paints them in the light of community projects. That's deceptive and damaging, not to OSM, but to communities unaware of the obscure details of data and API licensing.

It seems to me that acknowledging influences can be incredibly dangerous in our presently litigious patent environment.

There are two problems:

1) Google paying attention to a community is far more attractive than a bunch of open source guys.

2) Google Maps's UI is much better than Open Street Maps'.

The first is hard to fix, unless some open consortium showers attention on communities.

The second should be solvable by following the dictates of a couple of highly qualified designers who have much sharper eyes than 41Latitude.com, which already does a great job.

About 2. Google map ui is moot on places where you need off line access.

And using all the data you and others provided to google, but in an offline manner is illegal.

Tangential, but a commenter brings up the empty map in Georgia. A quick search turns up this would-be explanation from over two years ago: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/where-is-georgia-on-g...

I'd be very curious to see an updated reason given - I don't think Google moves quite slowly enough for "we're just not happy with the quality of the data quite yet" to hold any water 2.5 years after they first claim so.

Georgia? We've always been at war with eurasia.

What are is the OP talking about with regard to corporate stewardship of public resources? They are providing the resource and asking for help building it. There is no public resource of mapping data in Africa. (That's why Google is building it)

If OSM wants to have the data they should start initiatives in Africa to do this.

As far as 'copying' OSM, isn't OSM 'open source'? If Google is violating their license that's one thing, but it sounds like they are copying ideas not protected by law, or within the framework of the licensing agreement.

I'm pretty sure OSM did start initiatives in Africa to do this.

http://mapkibera.org/

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