MapInfo

MapInfo Professional is proprietary closed-source GIS software, sold by Pitney Bowes Software. MapInfo has its own MapInfo Interchange Format (MIF). See wikipedia:MapInfo Interchange Format

Opening MIF in JOSM

This can be done via the OpenData plugin.

Using OSM Vector data in MapInfo

MapInfo can read ESRI Shapefiles (including those generated from OpenStreetMap data) natively. It's own proprietary format is known as a TAB file, which is actually made up of a number of separate physical files (much like Shapefiles consist of more than one physical file).

OSM Translator ([1]) "allows you to download data from OpenStreetMap into MapInfo.tab format" mailing list post

Using OSM tiles as a background layer in MapInfo

You could do this via a OSM WMS server.

Oziexplorer might allow you to do this (if you can make any sense of it) or related tools such as "osm-map" perhaps.

See also this forum discussion

As of Version 11 MapInfo comes with an optional Premium Services add-on at extra cost. This adds Bing Road Tiles and OpenStreetMap Tiles as backdrop layers, accessible by buttons built into the main application interface. More information is available on the Pitney Bowes Software site here.

As of Version 10.5 Tile Servers are a supported Table type. To add a tile server table you need a .TAB file which defines the projection and points to an .xml file which contains URL and tile size details.

An example of the content of the .TAB file is:

!table
!version 1050
!charset WindowsLatin1


Definition Table
  File "OSM_Roads.xml"
  Type "TILESERVER"
  CoordSys Earth Projection 10, 157, "m", 0 Bounds (-20037508.342789244, -20037508.343038857) 
       (20037508.342789244, 20037508.343038857)
ReadOnly

While the .xml file (named OSM_Roads.xml, to match the .TAB file above) might look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TileServerInfo Type="LevelRowColumn">
  <Url>https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{LEVEL}/{ROW}/{COL}.png</Url>
  <MinLevel>0</MinLevel>
  <MaxLevel>18</MaxLevel>
  <TileSize Height="256" Width="256" />
  <AttributionText Font="Font ("Tahoma",257,8,16777215,0)">
      © 2012 OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA</AttributionText>	
</TileServerInfo>

To use different tile servers simply changing the URL and Attribution in the .xml file is usually sufficient. Ensure that both the .TAB and .xml files are in the same directory before adding to MapInfo via File > Open like any other .TAB file

See also

• MapInfo on Wikipedia.