History of OpenStreetMap
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Steve Coast founded OpenStreetMap in 2004, initially focusing on mapping the United Kingdom. In the UK and elsewhere, government-run and tax-funded projects like the Ordnance Survey created huge data sets, but failed to freely and widely distribute them. On August 22nd 2006, the OpenStreetMap Foundation was established to encourage the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and provide geospatial data for anybody to use and share.
The volunteer mappers made edits to the OSM data using a java-based applet on the OSM homepage or stand-alone “offline” programs supported by own surveys, self-recorded GPS traces and public-domain satellite imagery. One of those offline editors was JOSM which was constantly improved from then on and is still one of the most used editors. In December 2006, Yahoo confirmed that OpenStreetMap could use its aerial photography as a backdrop for map production. Half a year later, a new online data editor Potlatch appeared on the OSM homepage with the intention to make the start of new users easier.
Ways to import and export data have continued to grow; by 2008, the project developed tools to export OpenStreetMap data to power portable GPS units, replacing their existing proprietary and out-of-date maps.
In November 2010 the completely rewritten editor Potlatch 2 was made available and the use of Microsoft Bing vertical aerial imagery allowed for tracing. “Simple and friendly” is the concept of the new online editor iD, which appeared in May 2013.
Contents
Founding and Early History
Tom's new editing Java Applet as of September 2005 (have a look at the map of this place today for comparison)
- 9th August 2004 – Domain openstreetmap.org registered by Steve Coast. In the following years this date is celebrated as OSM's birthday.
- 12th August 2004 – First commit (an “import” from wherever(?)) to the OSM subversion program code repository of OpenStreetMap
- 16th August 2004 – The OSM website is up (also see more historic versions of the homepage)
- 20th August 2004 – Steve Coast presented his mapping idea at EuroFOO (summary by an attendee)
- 2nd September 2004 – First posting to the mailing list (then just 'openstreetmap', now 'talk')
- 7th September – The Java-plugin-based in-browser online editor, simply called “Java Applet”, was first added to the code.
- 6th October 2004 – Steve Coast uploads a description of how to contribute to OpenStreetMap (… at this time!)
- 11th December 2004 – A new version of the Java Applet went public at the openstreetmap.org homepage. New feature: you could add streets, yeah!
- 24th April 2005 – Installation of MediaWiki which replaced the former PhpWiki
- 17th July 2005 – Map Limehouse, the first Mapping Party
- 27th August 2005 – Tom Carden uploads the code for a new applet, which replaces the old applet on the homepage at 4th September, 2005.
- 5th April 2005 – The Qt-based OSM editor osmeditor is uploaded to the OSM code repository by Nick Whitelegg.
- 20th October 2005 – a high quality limited edition poster is produced and sold.
- Christmas Day 2005 – 1000th user registered
- 22th January 2006 – Release of version 1.0 of the offline editor JOSM
- 27th January 2006 – opengeodata.org registered
- 17th March 2006 – First draft of the documentation page Map Features created
- 20th March 2006 – A osmarendered map of Weybridge is the first OpenStreetMap-based map to go on Wikipedia.
- 22nd March 2006 – OSM data is successfully fed back into a GPS device
- ▶ Take a journey into the past (23th April 2006) by watching an old JOSM introduction video about getting started with editing. You will also shortly see a part of the OpenStreetMap homepage at that time.
- 5th–7th May 2006 – IOW workshop, the first concentrated effort to map an area (and the first time many of the contributors met)
- 13th–14th May 2006 – Mapchester, the first collaborative mapping weekend in Manchester drawing in volunteers new to GPS and mapping
- 3rd July 2006 – Potlatch 1 alpha released.
- 12th August 2006 – 2nd Anniversary Party, London
- 20th August 2006 – OpenStreetMap Foundation registered
- 31st August 2006 – 3000 registered users
- 10th November 2006 – Mapnik rendered slippy map makes its debut.
- 4th December 2006 – Yahoo! aerial imagery sketching allowed, which was removing the quasi contribution requirement of having a GPS device from mappers.
- ▶ Take a journey into the past (7th February 2007) by watching an video of the “Java Applet”(in case the playback does not work automatically, the downloadable .flv file could be played with e.g. VLC media player) about editing with help by the new aerial imagery.
(More historical milestones needed here, see discussion)
The Start of Our Current Technology Stack
Screenshot of the editor Potlatch in 2008 (have a look at the map of this place today for comparison)
- 5th May 2007 – The Rails Port came online with API v0.4 as did the Potlatch editor on the openstreetmap.org homepage.
- 14th–15th July 2007 – First conference, "State Of The Map 2007", held in Manchester.
- 1st August 2007 – 5 million ways
- 7th August 2007 – 10,000 registered users
- 11th August 2007 – 3rd Anniversary Party, London
- 18th August 2007 – 100 million GPS points
- September 2007 – TIGER data import for the US started
- 20th September 2007 – AND Data for The Netherlands imported
- 7th October 2007 – Move to API v0.5 with segments dropped and relations added
- 18th November 2007 – 150 million GPS points and 100 million nodes
- 25th December 2007 – 20,000 registered users
- 8th January 2008 – 20 million ways
- 13th January 2008 – 200 million nodes
- 23th January 2008 – TIGER data import for the United States finished
- ▶ Take a journey into the past (February 2008 until January 2009) by watching Steve's OSM editing tutorial videos(in case the playback does not work automatically, the downloadable .flv file could be played with e.g. VLC media player).
- February 2008 – a series of workshops were held in India.
- 19th February 2008 – 25,000 registered users
- 12th–13th July 2008 – "State Of The Map 2008", held in Limerick, Ireland.
- 8th February 2009 – Map updates more than once a week
- 17th March 2009 – 100,000 registered users
New API 0.6, Explosion of User Growth and the License Change
- 21st April 2009 – Big switch to API version 0.6 which introduces changesets
- 10th–12th July 2009 – "State Of The Map 2009", held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
- 25th August 2009 – Potlatch did not only have friends: there was the running gag to "ban Potlatch" (due to bad editing made by some of its – new – users using Potlatch's "live edit" mode) which even made its way into the node editing density history (visible in the USA area in a heatmap timelapse of node edits).
- 5th January 2010 – 200,000 registered users
- 13th January 2010 – Appeal for mappers launched after earthquake strikes Haiti. A detailed map is produced in 48 hours.
- 1st April 2010 – Ordnance Survey Opendata releases. OSM partly responsible for bringing this about.
- 9th–11th July 2010 – "State Of The Map 2010", held in Girona, Spain.
- November 2010 – One year after its first public version, the new editor Potlatch 2 was embedded into the openstreetmap.org homepage and set to be the new default editor another four months later.
- 30th November 2010 – Use of Bing vertical aerial imagery allowed
- 29th November 2011 – 500,000 registered users
- 9th–11th September 2011 – "State Of The Map 2011", held in Denver, Colorado, U.S.
- 29th August 2012 – 750,000 registered users
- 6th–8th September 2012 – "State Of The Map 2012", held in Tokyo, Japan.
- 12th September 2012 – License switched over to ODbL
- 23rd November 2012 – The map display of the openstreetmap.org homepage was switched from the OpenLayers to the Leaflet library
- 6th January 2013 – 1,000,000 registered users
New User Interfaces and Continued Growth
- 23rd Apr 2013 – Even unregistered users can now leave Notes on the map on www.openstreetmap.org to report problems!
- 7th May 2013 – Five months after its first public version, the new editor iD was embedded into the openstreetmap.org homepage and set to be the new default editor another three months later.
- 6th–8th September 2013 – "State Of The Map 2013", held in Birmingham, England.
- 2nd December 2013 – The www.openstreetmap.org website is completely redesigned.
- 14th January 2014 – 20,000,000th changeset.
- 9th August 2014 – Celebrations for the tenth anniversary of OpenStreetMap take place around the world
- 7th–9th November 2014 – "State Of The Map 2014", held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- 16th February 2015 A routing feature was enabled on the www.openstreetmap.org website
- Spring 2015 – 2,000,000 registered users
- (State Of The Map 2015 was cancelled)
- 30th October 2015 – New road style of the standard map. Major changes to improve legibility and consistency of roads in the cartography.
- 16th March 2016 – The editor JOSM reaches version 10000 in its 10th year
- 23th–25th September 2016 – "State Of The Map 2016", was held in Brussels, Belgium.
- 18th–20th August 2017 – "State Of The Map 2017" was held in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan.
See also
- News Archive — archive of news from this wiki's main page
- Development activity for major software launches (out-of-date – currently showing 2004–2010)
- Moments in the history of OSM
- Statistics — more statistics showing the growing number of users and data elements
- Research — contains scientific analysis of OpenStreetMap's growth
- Major events in the years 2010–2013 by the Wochennotiz (in German)
- The official OSM blog still contains all the old entries (archive navigation on the left bottom)
- How a OSM-based map looked in 2008 (without USA; announcement)
