Beyond the Code
or, how to win friends, influence people and make a living by writing open source software. It's not just about the code.
Follow me on Twitter as @jonobennett.
Tuesday 17 March 2009, 12:49 PM
OpenStreetMap hits 100,000 users
The OpenStreetMap project (OSM) now has over 100,000 registered users, as of 16th March. If you're not familiar with OSM, it's a free, editable map of the world, aiming to do for geographical data what Wikipedia did for encyclopaedias.
(Declaration of interest: I'm both a contributor to OSM and a member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation)
Since the project was started less than five years ago it's gone from being derided as completely unworkable to rivalling commercial geodata sets where its coverage is good. The number of people contributing data is still a fraction of the total, the two are related. Bulk imports from other sources have helped increase the coverage and quality of OSM's data, but it still needs volunteers to get out there and check what's on the ground.
(Declaration of interest: I'm both a contributor to OSM and a member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation)
Since the project was started less than five years ago it's gone from being derided as completely unworkable to rivalling commercial geodata sets where its coverage is good. The number of people contributing data is still a fraction of the total, the two are related. Bulk imports from other sources have helped increase the coverage and quality of OSM's data, but it still needs volunteers to get out there and check what's on the ground.
Previous
