dianashk

Great point! As developers, we've all been there. Mapzen's mission is to create services that outlive the brand/company. Everything we do is open source and easy to stand up on your own.

Pelias, the project powering our Search service is written entirely in node.js + Elasticsearch, to make it accessible to the largest number of developers, because JavaScript.

We also host an instance of Pelias to make the service accessible for those that can't/won't run their own.

More details [here](https://mapzen.com/projects/search).

It's not out of the question, however there are many obstacles to overcome, such as licensing, validation, and the fact that the OSM community generally insists on manually entered data.

I've heard many folks push for consolidation of various open data projects, so they aren't "competing" for contributions. However the reality is that they are currently very different and each serves to bridge a very specific gap.

In the meantime, it makes a lot of sense for projects relying on open data to pull all of these sources in, as Mapzen Search is doing, to ensure the best possible coverage.

It's built on open data sets, including OpenStreetMap and OpenAddresses. In populated areas coverage is really good. Thanks to OpenAddresses, several countries have full address coverage. You can see the coverage map on openaddresses.io. New data gets added as these open data sources grow.

ooooh so mesmerizing...