Gl:DAFO de OSM

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Preámbulo

Esta páxina está dedicada á identificación de debilidades, ameazas, forzas e oportunidades de OSM (análise DAFO). Por favor, agregue ás listaxes baixo destas liñas os títulos adecuadas. Para lograr as informacións para a análise e os exemplos, por favor, vexa os materiais de referencia das ligazóns finais.

Internos: as forzas e as debilidades están referidas a aspectos internos de OSM sobre os que nós, a comunidade, temos control.

Externos: oportunidades e ameazas, son influencias externas cos que podemos e en moitas ocasións debemos lidiar.

A práctica habitual deste tipo de análise é a chuvia de ideas. Hai só dúas normas. A primeira, non hai malas ideas. Todas as ideas son apropiadas e deben engadirse á listaxe. Estamos nesta fase así que por moi tola ou inusual que a túa idea te pareza, se cres que é unha verdadeira forza, debilidade, oportunidade ou ameaza, anótao. En segundo lugar, non están permitidos os ataques ad hominen (é dicir, persoais). Se alguén pon algo nesta páxina que non che gusta, expresa a túa opinión educadamente a continuación.

Por favor, non dubides en replicar esta páxina noutras linguas. Cando o fagas, pon unha ligazón a esa nova páxina nesta. Se non sabes facelo, envía un correo electrónico a communication@osmfoundation.org

Análise DAFO de OpenStreetMap

Forzas de OSM

Forzas organizativas de OSM

  • a comunidade de persoas mapeadoras
  • OSM significa que as persoas poden estar orgullosas do seu mapa local
  • descentralizado, estrutura federal
  • barreiras técnicas baixas para contribuír
  • abertas e ben traballadas canles de comunicación
  • atrae a moitos desenvolvedores voluntarios
  • mellora continua da plataforma por máis de 15 anos
  • HOT, Equipo Humanitario de Openstreetmap
  • inspires people with a huge diversity of personal and professional interests
  • OSM is mostly volunteers, so they care about the project, and are hard to "buy off", and hard to make "go away".
  • Individuals act as guardians of their area, providing detailed QA
  • Community accepts the free form and non-hierachial tagging system, providing a lot of flexibility and ability to adapt to new things to map.
  • Direct personal benefit of contributions and edits
  • brings people together to work on something good and useful as a team
  • offers a "seat at the table" and participation in the community project to geeky/nerdy people who might not tend to socialize a lot - allows them to make valuable contribution and be respected for it
  • The diversity of people from different places involved with the project
  • Accuracy is approximate so no dependence on surveying with precision tools
  • Mapping into OSM is an enjoyable activity. Surveying is a fun excuse to get outside and explore your local area. Armchair mapping can compete with adult colouring books for a relaxing activity.
  • OSM enables a fairly extensive range of activities where people can engage. This offers plenty of opportunities for people to transition between different roles over time, while still being part of the community.
  • Local knowledge added to OSM in places with an active community.
  • While corporate competitors also offer local users to make changes to their maps, updates to neighbourhood OSM are almost instant and more enjoyable for mapper to make.
  • OSM benefits from unpaid volunteers. This make things possible that would not normally be if a full wage was paid.
  • State of the map and the scholarship program.
  • OSM could use her strength of a global, open community to truly listen, analysis, engage, and work on these items.
  • OSM is successful in bridging cultural and language barrier with the common and universally understandable goal of cooperative mapping by individuals based on local knowledge.
  • openness to editing for everyone allows OSM to quickly react to current events changing the geography as well as to vandalism.
  • primacy of the local community and on-the-ground verifiability are proven principles to resolve conflicts in the community.
  • Rising expectations for community approachability and diversity
  • The tagging system allows us to map very localized featurs, eg traditional healers
  • We can map areas we want, we dont have to wait for commercial map providers or governmental initiatives
  • The global State of the Map, but also the regional ones: Sotm Asia, Sotm Africa, Sotm Latin America ...
  • It is worldwide 1 map
  • altruistic project even in non-humanitarian arenas - people freely give their time to make something for everyone.
  • independent of state and commercial interests

Efectos de OSM

  • good coverage in parts of the world where other map providers are weak
  • Keeps the commercial maps on their toes. Quite sure other offerings would be more expensive and less good if not for OSM.
  • Improves (and even saves) lives in neglected areas where commercial actors have no interest
  • Sharing of technical strength to community and contributors (people learn a lot contributing)
  • Vibrant and diverse private sector built on top of OSM (lots of people making a living by using and contributing, not even counting big commercial user/contributors)
  • Allows people and small companies the ability to quickly generate maps without paying huge royalties
  • The usefulness of OSM for humanitarian organisations

Calidade de OSM

  • Highly up-to-date as changes are affective almost immediately
  • Hyper local content & local knowledge encouraged
  • Home to many niche interests without treading on each others toes: railways; power networks; cycling infrastructure; etc.
  • A place to find detailed domain knowledge and lively debate over how to map anything
  • political neutrality
  • Maps free of political interference, ads and company branding
  • More reliable than all large commercial free online maps services
  • Data goes beyond maps, allowing potential for interesting solutions based off that data.
  • In times of crises we can map/update the data incredibly fast

Forzas legais de OSM

  • open license
  • safely licensed data due to whiter-than-white policy for admitting sources (+1)
  • ODbL license has not been challenged
  • Not legally binding. Mistakes can be tolerated

Forzas técnicas de OSM

  • Proven data model with built-in flexibility
  • Freedom in what can be mapped (not just streets)
  • Huge range in what is mapped due to flexible model + freedom
  • Historical memory of abandoned places or simply older toponym's name
  • Made by pedestrians and cyclists so favours details (e.g. the design and contents of a park, rather than how to drive past it fastest)
  • Worldwide coverage
  • Excellent up-time on servers.
  • Immediate feedback from making an edit to seeing it on the map.
  • tools for contributors are largely available in a fairly broad spectrum of languages, allowing a lot of people relatively low language barriers for contribution.
  • ID editor integrated into browser makes starting with mapping very easy. Maybe add option to switch between iD v2 and v3?
  • The possibility to integrate AI data sets and get the map complete quicker
  • Data history allows traceability.

Outras forzas de OSM

  • good brand image in hacker/FOSS/tech circles
  • Our data is widely used.
  • Our brand is known and this is expanding to all industry sectors.
  • Other have released open data following the creation of OSM.
  • There are no adverts on osm.org

Debilidades de OSM

  • communication tools on website are weak - community is bound to use random spots and misses messages as spam
  • wiki login is still separate from "main" site like it's a different project
  • no developers - all are from commercial companies, no larger features for site
  • no DBA to refactor main database and replication API to make it easier for consumers to consume diffs
  • Weak data maintenance culture, biased toward dwindling greenfield mapping areas
  • No strategic decision-making capability
  • Loud discussions kill the vibe
  • Lack of strategic vision for the project
  • Lack of Code of Conduct, many people (especially women) experience a hostile environment in fora
  • Current handling of hierarchical administrative divisions is fragile (and often a mess) in developing regions
  • Discussion of data quality in low-income countries sometimes lacks context and mutual understanding. This seems to contribute to the perceived antagonism between "craft" and "institutional" (sometimes referred to as "corporate") mappers
  • Difficult and discouraging to import some external datasets even when quality and license are appropriate (not finding fault, it's just hard and the process needs work)
  • HOT narrative making OSM a one trick pony
  • Goals of the OSMF and OSM are not congruent
  • OSM community has a large amount of volunteers, if a large amount are discouraged, data quality & freshness could suffer massively
  • Is a commodity. Higher layers of the supply chain earn the rents.
  • Lack of ways for rents to trickle down to individuals
  • Individuals act as guardians of their area, perhaps discouraging new or external assistance
  • core parts of our data model still suffer from omissions, inconsistencies, and a lack of standardization, causing conflicts between adherents of different mapping schools and making OSM data harder to use
  • nuances of licensing are hard to understand for small companies and hobbyists wanting to use OSM, and asking the community for help often produces contradictory answers or "ask your lawyers"
  • no compelling end-user experience on the web
  • slow evolution of core software components
  • too many people writing about slow evolution of core software components, which is neither accurate, nor does it help in getting anything done.
  • some aspects of our data model aren't as accessible for inexperienced contributors as they could be (see: relations)
  • The OSM data model is not consistent between features
  • lack of unity regarding core values, and resulting difficulties in setting boundaries
  • low flexibility in responding to changes in the legal landscape due to imports of ODbL-only data
  • stagnating growth in older/larger communities
  • some sub-communities retreat from our self-hosted communication platforms into their own bubbles, furthering fragmentation and polarization
  • lack of POI data compared to some competitors, less likely for POI owners to submit updates themselves
  • conflicts are sometimes fought in the public arena, and some cases people appear to be willing to risk damage to OSM's reputation in pursuit of their goals
  • parts of the world still lack a sizeable, grass-roots local community
  • The default rendering of OSM does not display all features with valid OSM tags
  • Some groups within OSM - e.g. HOT, OSM-US - present themselves to the outside as if they "are OSM" (and collect donations "for OSM projects") but their contribution to OSM is very limited and sometimes even considered harmful.
  • meanwhile so popular that it attracts contributors who make suggestions but do not spend significant time doing map edits!
  • Hostility and ad hominem attacks are seen targeting contributors—especially those whose main contribution is not edits—who strive to improve the diversity and inclusiveness of the OSM community.
  • Has very few promotional resources, or digital content explaining, or showcasing OSM (e.g. not lots of results for “OpenStreetMap” on YouTube, not many books).
  • No possibility to asses quality or completeness in an area (aside from quantitative metrics)
  • No/Bad support for (near) real time or temporary informations
  • Not enough tile servers offers, making tiles very slow. This annoys mappers and gives a bad impression.
  • openstreetmap.org doesn't offer the map tile in different languages, a commonly requested feature
  • Tagging documentation is poor, and hard for data consumers to understand and know what's real (cf. SotM 2019 Heidelberg discussion)
  • OSM has 1 000 000 contributors, but <1 500 foundation members, meaning OSMF can't truly represent people contributing to OSM
  • More and more parts of our map can no longer be edited or maintained by normal users. This is due to the growing complexity, the excessive micro-mapping by individuals and also the HOT-mapping, where creatively painted tiles will never form a usable road network, but a chaotic patchwork.
  • The behaviour of the default editor, iD, is not controlled by the community
  • End users of applications using OSM-data don't even know about the OSM project.
  • No way to deprecate and remove any old tagging scheme in favour of any new one.
  • It's hard for outsiders to understand what OSM is and what OSM isn't (i.e. a data project, not a complete & hosted map solution like Google/Here/etc).
  • English is the only language used to display large geographical features, like oceans.Glassman (talk) 23:35, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
  • IT infrastructure continues to have difficulties keeping up with demand, especially loading tiles.Glassman (talk) 23:35, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Hard to find deleted items
  • Impossible to monitor recent changes to an area on OSM.org - recent changesets are only shown by a rectangle containing all the changes which may be as big as a continent. A user would have to go thru every change in every such changeset under History to see if the changeset affected his/her city.
    • Suggestion: use of heat maps to highlight areas, where changes were made.
  • Discoverability: Overwhelming number of tools in the larger OSM ecosystem, making it difficult for inexperienced users to find the right tool for the task at hand. As a consequence, people ask for more and more tools in the OSM core, while perfectly well working solutions are already available (as an example: changeset view on osm.org vs. OSMCha).
  • Companies and organizations involved in humanitarian mapping understand OSM more as a PR vehicle than as a platform for reliable map data.
  • Community participation is not well spread out (geographically).
  • Lots of the data that has been added is no longer maintained.
  • We rely on sources outside of our control (e.g. aerial and street imagery).
  • Very few people actually contribute regularly.
  • Software development is not coordinated.
  • Lack of mobile apps (especially QA and beginner focused).
  • Previous opportunities missed (e.g. collection of aerial imagery, collection of POI data via specialist apps).
  • The wiki is overly complex for new mappers.
  • New mappers appear to be aware of only two softwares: iD (iDv3, RadiD and other derivates) and JOSM. Learning curve from moving one to next is far too steep.
  • It is hard to see what map data needs attention.
  • Too many of the most useful OSM related aids/software are outside of the main project making them hard to find even for the most active users.
  • Do-ocracy restricts those without the required skills from participating (even if they have great ideas).
  • No central idea to coordinate around.
  • Many technical barriers to contribute (editing can be daunting).
  • Some editing is actually very dull to do.
  • The data can be very inconsistent.
  • Many members have unsubscribed from some communication channels and will therefore miss important topics.
  • Discussions go off topic all the time making it hard to get consensus.
  • Duplication of effort (e.g. several QA tools doing similar things).
  • Most of the population do not use OSM but do use other maps almost daily (e.g. Google Maps).
  • It takes a long time from idea to implementation (core systems).
  • OSMF only has one administrative assistant.
  • Lack of official OSM app confuses people who are used to the way other organisations work.
  • OpenStreetMap.org on mobile does not work well. (+1)
  • The amount of time excessively debating things means that we don't move forward that quickly.
  • Some previously active communities are now shrinking.
  • It is not clear what the benefits of becoming a Local Chapter are.
  • We often forget that the vast majority of OSM members and users do not participate in discussions therefore we don't really know what the majority think.
  • Too few volunteers with dedication to get OSM projects going.
  • Even open-source advocates usually use other mapping services.
  • First time visitors (editors / data users / viewers) to website are not well catered for.
  • Main map hides the usefulness of the whole project, most of the data/use-cases is hidden.
  • OSM does not give users strong reasons to use the OSM maps rather than googlemaps.
  • Lack of publicity.
  • No metrics (or KPIs) to drive focus.
  • There are no tools to help keep imported data up to date with the source.
  • Poor online methods for social interaction and community-building.
  • Focus on data instead of focusing on users.
  • New contributors graph is in decline for last 4 years and nobody is bothered to ask why.
  • Routing on osm.org fails too often with "can't find place" when you pinned point already. (this sounds like https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/1874, better follow up on github).
  • Github issues for main site from 2018 are not addressed in 2020.
  • Github issues for osm.org often have unclear status (what topics still need to be discussed; are issues still relevant, abandoned,...). No clear bug/defect triage process, prioritization of issues not always clear (maybe not clearly communicated). Tip: Use GitHub labels, and maybe project boards.
  • Lack of project roadmap
  • Lack of community engagement strategy
  • Single player actors voices and actions diminish people's engagement in the project by bullying and drowning other voices.
  • There is no recourse if a key contributor to project does not adhere to the 'etiquette code'.
  • The board states that the working groups make the decisions. The working groups say that the community makes the decisions. There are few new people engaged in these governance spaces.
  • The narrative and trope that HOT and the HOT community is a threat to OSM. It would serve the project to see HOT as a benefit.
  • Lack of strategy to recruit open source developers to support the project.
  • lack of clear communication of the core principles and values of OSM has led to people joining and engaging in the project as volunteers with significant outside goals (like career interests, political visions, values and belief systems of other projects) while rejecting the core values and goals of OpenStreetMap.
  • as a result a significant number of often highly visible people who see OSM primarily as
    • a business to manage and optimize like any other business for maximizing ROI
    • a platform for pursuing certain political interests
    • a platform for pursuing career interests
    • a repository of useful openly licensed geodata independ of how it is produced
    • an English language/American culture dominated open source/tech project that can and should be managed like many other tech projects out there (Mozilla, python, you name it)
  • the OSM community currently lacks a broad spectrum of community map design projects that properly represent the geographic diversity covered by the project.
  • we are lacking the ability to effectively regulate organized non-individual activities within the project.
  • our ability to recruit and motivate local contributors varies a lot in different parts of the world as well as between different social groups.
  • Training - lack of effective well maintained training impacts Attraction, Engagement, Retention and Diversity
  • New users tend to map objects that could easily be imported in bulk, such as building/address data.
  • Lack of standards on 3D mapping. Every major renderer has it's own quirks, even flat and skillion roofs can be rendered differently.
    • Support for mapping non-flat bottom of building parts. E.g: "Sails" of Sydney opera house.
    • Community may need open-source reference software, that has good performance (unlike Kendzi3d).
    • There should be guidelines for renderers too. For example, "is building's wall that is higher than lowest point of roof coloured same colour as walls or it shares colour with roof"?
    • Wiki pages regarding 3D mapping needs revision. Some almost empty pages are marked as "Work in progress" since 2011-2014. For rookie mapper, it's very confusing to see lot of pages (e.g about roof shapes) marked as proposals. Some of these proposals are actually put into practice while others are just left there.
  • Hypocrisy between OSM core values and real life. First three following points were observed in local OSM forum.
    • Sooner or later, in every group of people, national, regional or global OSM communities, leader(s) will naturally emerge. Issues start, if/when leadership becomes dictatorship. Those leaders try to moderate map to shape it matching their ideals. This kills off diversity, which should have led to quality map that caters to wide range of needs (cyclist, pedesterians, drivers, 3D-pedants) and only focuses on what leadership commends necessary.
    • If leadership emerges in small local community, the may become toxic and hostile against foreign editors, who will come and ruin their local standard of tagging. OSM was supposed to encourage people be anywhere and map everywhere?
    • Community's disgust towards automation vs sustainable maintenance of accurate map. Every growing system also grows costs of it's upkeep. We will need automation (not necessarily AI) to keep already mapped (urban) areas up to date. Old buildings are demolished and new ones are built instead all the time. Modern developed democratically open country has (county) government department whose responsibility is to coordinate and publish planned developments. If there's open human-reviewed data about buildings that aren't even on aerial images yet, why OSM community dismisses such import as threat against quality mapping?
  • No Code of Conduct: many OSM discussions are controlled by a small number of loud voices. Many choose not to participate in OSM forums because there is no Code of Conduct setting standards for communication. We need to create a more welcoming atmosphere.
    • When person starts mapping first time, a short TLDR (up to 3000 characters) of guidelines could be shown to them. After that edit, they receive longer document with links to wiki pages they should familiarise soon. That's for OSM, not wiki, which already has similar concept.
  • Inexperienced users have no way to revert some of their accidental changesets made with iD in web browser.
  • The wiki and the importance bestowed upon it is a major barrier to fuller community participation. It is a form of communication that most people do not use in their everyday lives. It requires a separate login. Formatting and editing are nonintuitive, and following all changes on pages is impossible. It is a medium where any one individual can make unlimited changes but is often treated as a source of truth. This analysis being conducted in the wiki likely cuts huge swaths of the community off from this exercise.
  • Lack of diversity within OSMF membership and board
  • There are still countries in the world where there is no OSM community
  • osm.org just looks like an ugly Google Maps
  • No easy way to switch to English or any other language
  • It is not obvious that you can edit the map for a 1st time viewer
  • No structured way how to deal with imports and external data
  • Is the definition of attributes to open?
  • The license makes it difficult to share data in 2 directions.
  • Downloading data or map prints is easier elsewhere
  • The word 'edit' is not clear, should we change the wording for 'improve the map'
  • The search engine:
    • is not forgiving small errors in what we search (when a user is not sure how it is spelled, it's hard to find it)
    • also, sometimes it does not find objects even if the important part of object's name is spelled correctly. Case (corrected): everyone uses name "Plac Kościuszki" but some user insisted on the neme "Plac imienia Kościuszki" which is not totally incorrect, but then the search engine couldn't find it when searching for "Plac Kościuszki".
    • shows street fragments instead of street when a user looks for a street. That's mainly because we don't use relations so there is no street as a whole in the database.
    • the same goes for rivers
    • in effect new users try to find something, find nothing or some rubbish and go to use another map
  • We don't make use of relations, because we have no tools to easily edit them and most users see the relations as a complication instead of an obvious way to keep things together.
  • OSM Foundation takes money from companies with questionable (Microsoft) or downright bad ethics (Facebook)
  • OSM works together with companies with questionable ethics (Google) for Summer of Code
  • Rising tensions between groups in the community (craft mappers vs. corporate US)
  • Technical barriers to contribute are low and this is not always a strength (anybody can make BAD changes).
  • Vandalism.
  • A tutorship process is missing. Newbies are left on their own.
  • Spending too much time doing QA to correct trivial mistakes made by newbies.
  • OSM is too much database centric – we don't care enough about its different uses (and about its apps).
  • OSM is not a homogeneous system/different tools with heterogeneous developers and timelines.
  • iD is developed by a 3rd party that appears not willing to listen to the community.
  • OSM web site is underdeveloped – the search engine, for instance, gives results which are not satisfying. The map end-user seeks a smoother experience as happens on other commonly used maps: when it searches an address it needs relevant results, not any possible one that matches the query.
  • Unresponsive mappers: mappers not willing to answer to messages or comments on changesets.
  • Individualism: most mappers don't feel to be part of a community.
  • Some corporations (e.g. Amazon) tend to contribute low quality data because they have a different agenda.
  • IA usage without human checks.
  • There are no clear links between OSMF, local chapters and mappers.
  • OSMF governance could be targeted by a (large) corporation in order to prioritize its interests.
  • There are no authorities with specific tasks (e.g. import revisions, tagging, etc). Everything is left to good will mappers (and even not good will mappers, not enough experienced mappers, etc).
  • Over-tagging: using much more tags than necessary (the DB is a finite resource!).
  • New tagging: some mappers tend to require new tags or new values for existing tags because they spot slightly differences (data consumers cannot keep up).
  • Attribution enforcing is ineffective because it is left to the single mapper. There is no central authority.

Ameazas de OSM

  • attempts to inundate the data with low quality mass data (imports, AI generated, and the like)
  • other organizations or movements trying to exploit OSM's reputation
  • stagnation because "it works — don't touch"
  • Highly-visible malicious vandalism, e.g. the Aug 2018 renaming of a large city to an insulting term.
  • Rising expectations for community approachability and diversity
  • Vocal response to expectations for approachability and diversity by some community members as if such expectations were a threat
  • Some demands outstripping resources. Tiles for example, and perhaps also the technical resources to mitigate (like a really robust vector tile serving setup)
  • As OSM becomes increasingly seen as authoritative, state actors may become antagonistic (very hard to defend against state-sponsored data vandalism)
  • Highly visible non-attributed use puts OSM in unpleasant dilemma (not responding risks weakening license protection, responding risks making OSM look nasty)
  • Becomes irrelevant due to lack of innovation in the face of highly automated map-making at scale.
  • Coordinated efforts to undermine OSM data quality (eg. SEO companies uploading questionable data without engaging the community)
  • One of the big three opening their data (google, here, tomtom), note this is a threat for OSM not so for the OSMF
  • A company directing their employees to sign up to OSMF, directing them how to vote, and hence “owning” OSMF & the OpenStreetMap trademarks etc
  • technological advancements in aerial or vehicle-mounted surveys and automated feature extraction may make OSM's human volunteer workforce less valuable
  • faster and cheaper mobile internet devalues OSM's traditional strength of offline maps
  • a growing market share of smartphones compared to laptop/desktop computers makes it more difficult for people to contribute at full productivity with devices they already own
  • upcoming lucrative use cases of geographic data (e.g. maps for self-driving cars) may provide rich sources of funding for our competitors
  • large corporations with business interests in repressive states starting to be seen as having a controlling influence on the map, thereby becoming a conduit for repressive states projecting their power. Example: China says to USA megacorp "hey we see you're editing a lot of OSM, please make sure Taiwan is properly recorded as belonging to China or else you might run into difficulties selling your services in our country"
  • control of OSMF snatched away by organisations (business, NGO, government) that have more financial resources or are better organised than current band of individuals
  • growing user expectations regarding services built into digital maps (real-time traffic, public transport schedules, aerial imagery, reviews, ...) make it more challenging for OSM, or entities in our ecosystem, to offer competitive products
  • changes in legislation may negatively affect OSM, e.g. liability for copyright violations in user-generated content, mandatory misinformation in maps, ...
  • modern mapping approaches (e.g. remote mapping, AI) make us increasingly dependent on non-free tools and imagery sources, and therefore the good-will of the organizations which provide them
  • increased participation of corporate users' employees in OSMF working groups may allow them to steer the project in a direction aligned with their commercial interests (intentionally or not)
  • known existing weaknesses and fault lines being abused/boosted by external parties in an attempt to antagonise/disrupt the community, like it has been done to the American public during first Trump election, possibly with an end-game of presenting a saviour
  • applying corporate governance and leadership principles to OSM without thinking what the important differences between OSM and a corporate environment are, and whether corporate rules even apply
  • naive engagement with well-meaning business actors ("they only want to help us, they are our friends") could infect OSM with short-term goal setting and management ideas that are standard in the business world but harm OSM
  • https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/evil-list-tech-companies-dangerous-amazon-facebook-google-palantir.html "Which tech companies are really doing the most harm? Here are the 30 most dangerous, ranked by the people who know." - of the 10 most evil tech companies #1,#2,#5,#6,#7 are highly and openly active in OpenStreetMap, threatening to replace the genuine and independent citizen mapping we used to be doing.
    • Example: the CAPTCHA system used on this wiki likely gives away contributor's identities to #3 on that list.
  • On the list of corporations ranked as "Evil" in the link posted in the preceding threat, Microsoft is #7. Microsoft's Bing Satellite project is the primary image source used for most OSM editing; if OSM rejects all contributions from corporations that have been ranked in the top 10 of a Slate "Evil list"—or for that matter companies with histories of vigorous opposition to open source—it will no longer be possible to use Bing imagery. So the threat is: if the OSM community is unable to take a nuanced approach to corporate involvement, creating an open map of the world will become vastly more difficult.
  • Large corporations decide that OSM doesn't move fast enough and decides to fork OSM. There is no way we could keep up, even if we wanted to, the required improvements ODbL requires that they provide back.
  • Losing support of contributors if we fail to become more inclusive, especially if it makes the news.
  • Failure to increase market share. People stick to (Google/HERE/Tomtom/...) Maps because it works for them
  • In developing countries we will not attract people to engage, if OSM appears too much as a humanitarian only project.
  • In developing countries we will not attract people to engage, if OSM insists upon applying a Western-style voluntarism model in places where people earn $2/day.
  • No one has a convincing idea how to involve people with a 2$ daily income in map making without payment. But there are areas where we urgently need to improve. The perception of the Openstreetmap as a whole in the HOT target countries as well as the perception of these countries by western armchair mappers (me too). This is a weakness as well as an opportunity. https://www.techzim.co.zw/?s=google+maps&x=0&y=0 https://www.techzim.co.zw/?s=openstreetmap&x=0&y=0 https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Cole%20Myers/history#map=11/-17.7369/31.3509&layers=N
  • Reputational (and to a lesser extent legal) damage by larger intellectual property violation of contributors (this was iirc noted in every previous SWOT analysis, but seems to be off the radar right now, even though it remains an issue).
  • We become bogged down by stories from the past - for every proposal there is always a bad example in the past to use; consequently we stagnate.
  • Working groups are unelected and often resist OSMF board input - thus creating a risk of project takeover by hostile members.
  • Contributors leave as a result of a negative event.
  • The data becomes stale over time and then becomes irrelevant.
  • We miss a great opportunity from the private sector due to negative attitudes towards businesses.
  • Attempts to deliver changes are blocked.
  • Other organizations catch up with our strengths making it harder to sell the OSM vision to new contributors.
  • Key people like sysadmins leaving.
  • Google Maps, Yandex Maps have push notifications asking users to contribute their input to the places they've been to.
  • OSM's lack of a plan exposes us to takeovers, project graveyards, and, disillusioned leaders/community contributors.
  • Why do people leave OSM? We rarely research the real reason why there is a decline in some aspects - governance, contributors. For a data-driven project, we are sorely missing an opportunity to improve.
  • Infighting and power dynamics make it hard for new people to engage in the future of the project.
  • Inability to mitigate coordinated, and/or encouraged, vandalism; think Pokemon Go but worse - if a game or activity encouraged mass editing of OSM in a harmful way.
  • organizations and corporations presenting themselves as friendly to the OSM community while pursuing massive economic goals often in fundamental conflict with the values of the project - using superficial friendliness as a weapon and taking advantage of the assume good faith attitude within the OSM community.
  • Perceived stagnation leading to lack of confidence in the project to make substantial long term progress.
  • lack of maintenance allows data to become stale reducing the truth of the map - e.g. bus routes change over time and may not be updated to reflect the new reality.
  • Increased discussion about ethics: what if OSM data is being used for "evil". E.g. with better maps, it makes it easier for organisations (incl governments) to plan actions targeting specific groups.
  • Risk of bad data
  • Only a few people doing core stuff
  • OSM apps are focused on mappers or advanced users.
  • It's difficult to get feedbacks from data consumers.

Oportunidades de OSM

  • market leading platform for sharing geodata
  • OSM excels as open data platform
  • take the lead in integrating AI datasets
  • Consider requirements and opportunities for supporting regional maps in local language
  • Only credible and extensible map provider outside of commercial core markets, e.g. Africa, Latin Am., & SE Asia
  • Several governments actively considering using OSM as base layer for things like national census.
  • OSM could become leading voice in global Free/Open sector promoting FOSS/open data values
  • For-profit and institutional users/contributors could become much more helpful (providing money, resources and data) if approached collaboratively and without a default of suspicion
  • Lots of people motivated to help on diversity and inclusion and improving the communication within the community. If welcomed and invited, they will come help.
  • Build a web application rivalling Google Maps, for privacy-conscious people and people in areas where Google has no coverage
  • government open data initiatives open up additional data sources
  • trend of location-aware video games opens up an additional use case (and potential source of contributors) for OSM
  • privacy awareness movement may benefit OSM, which is seen as an alternative to ad-funded internet companies
  • synergies with other wiki-style communities emerge (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, Commons, OpenPlaques, local wikis, ...)
  • only map where data acquisition is not driven by profit motive
  • Humanity needs a commonly owned geodata/map, and OSM is best place to meet that need.
  • Build vector tiles to serve tiles in multiple languages.
    • For start and to save computing costs, localised tile sets could be generated for just regions, where most people speak that language.
  • There is a large number of people that have never heard of OSM and would like to contribute.
  • Small business and non-profits using our tiles in their websites.
  • Someone makes innovative use of the map data in ways no-one has yet done or thought about.
  • The quality of machine learning is rapidly improving.
  • It may be possible to encourage more organizations to release open data.
  • Lidar devices are becoming cheaper.
  • Cars are now often equipped with built in cameras / many non OSMers now have dash-cams.
  • Open Data is becoming increasingly used and understood.
  • Automatic translation of text is becoming better allowing people speaking different languages to better communicate (e.g. add a button to translate diary posts just like how you can translate social media posts by the click of a button).
  • We have a strong chance of getting more sponsorship and funding if we push for it.
  • One of the big three opening their data (google, here, tomtom); an opportunity for OSM to source local data from non OSM contributors.
  • Money can be passed down to the grass-roots of the project to avoid top down control.
  • It is easier to do online polls (and such like) to gather the views of OSMers.
  • Previous experience of adding routing options to OpenStreetMap.org has proven that it is possible to add more features to the main website without destroying the great third party solutions that have developed around OSM.
  • Improve sense of community - tools such as OSM Calendar and Microcosm could be integrated into the main website.
  • The community could be inclusive if we actually invested in this as a priority. The data we contribute could thus improve too by being more inclusive.
  • If we worked on governance and inclusion for the board and working groups, this could offset the potential threat of corporate takeovers.
  • OSM could learn lessons from other open projects.
  • OSM is a beloved global project. If we made a plan to address these issues, we could engage advisors and help from both within the project and beyond.
  • The OSMF could dedicate staff to process potential data imports, instead of forcing inexperienced users to take initiative whenever they find a good data set.
    • I personally wanted to import building+address data for the city of Philadelphia, but I was intimidated by the process, and I could not find someone else who could do this for me.
  • OSM community should accept automation tools as an opportunity, not threat.
  • Because OSM is open data you can make more out of the data by eg combining the data with other data sets, or raising awareness around specific topics. Eg all the different services that a cornershop might offer
  • Becoming a real Open POI Map. AI will provide us with geometries in the future, let us focus on the meta data - the local data.
  • Single European emergency number 112 call centres could use OSM to provide better localization (some already do, at least in Italy).
  • Collaboration with local alpine clubs (there are already some, e.g. with CAI in Italy).

Discusión

Por favor, a discusión relativa á análise DAFO de OSM está nesta páxina.

Materiais de referencia

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Traballo previo para o futuro de OSM

Consideracións de particulares