[Osmf-talk] Mea Culpa, musings on "craft" | Re: What's our USP? | Re: "Legitimacy from an election process to direct attention" – Your response to the question regarding Working Groups

[Minh Nguyen]

Vào lúc 02:46 2019-12-13, Rory McCann đã viết:
> What I wrote could be interpreted as “Anyone who wants a map should 
> leave OSM”, and that's totally not what I think, sorry for my poor 
> communication. 🙁 Mea culpa. I attempted to (tersely) say “OSM 
> provides more than “just” a map”.
>
> I used the word "just", if you want nothing more than a map, with no 
> other requirements, there are many options for that, GMaps, national 
> agencies (and yes, also OSM) they can also give you “a map”.
For what it’s worth, I got the gist of what you were trying to say and 
rather liked the pithy way you put it.
> If you want more, if you want a *egalitarian* map, with less options 
> for corruption, then join us in OpenStreeMap. 🙂 If you want a map 
> anyone can update, then Google Maps doesn't fit the bill, OSM does. If 
> you want a map that's freely licensed, many national mapping agencies 
> can't fulfill that, but OSM can. If you have requirements beyond “just 
> a map”, join us in OSM. 🙂
>
> To me, ”craft” means high quality, it means something made with care, 
> something made by people, something made with dedication and passion, 
> something made by someone who know what they're doing, by someone for 
> the love of the craft, of the output.
>
> To me, craft isn't the same as "hobbyist". For centuries people have 
> earned their living with their crafts & skills. People can, and do, 
> have craft businesses. 

In trying to evangelize OSM to communities and agencies in my city, 
right in Google’s backyard, I’ve found a need to use different 
terminology to describe the classic OSM ethos.

Mikel pointed out that the term “craft mapping” comes with baggage 
within the OSM community, but I’ve actually found it problematic outside 
the OSM community too. As I introduce OSM to locals, the first question 
I get is, “Why not Google?” and the second, “How is it different than 
Map Maker/Waze/Foursquare/Wikimapia?” and the third, “Isn’t TIGER 
already public domain?” (Cue groans.) As an answer to these questions, 
“craft” mapping mostly paints OSM in a quaint or iconoclastic light, 
which misses the point. On top of that, teetotalism is not uncommon 
around me, so not everyone particularly appreciates the apparent 
reference to alcohol right off the bat. (People here tend to think of 
“craft brewing”, not “arts & crafts”.)

Lately, I’ve taken to describing OSM as a home for “grassroots” mapping. 
[1] That’s not to say it’s exclusively for hobbyists, but the imagery it 
evokes is one of civic-minded individuals leading a movement that takes 
society in a better direction. We can engage with corporations and other 
organizations – in fact, I also evangelize OSM unofficially within 
Mapbox – but the focus should be on principles like egalitarianism, open 
licensing, and database federation that people can rally behind even if 
they’ve never heard of OSM before. The technology or lack thereof is 
secondary. The fourth question I get is, “Why does it matter?” It’s easy 
to find examples of where proprietary alternatives to OSM fall short of 
building an equitable map, making it rather evident how an overreliance 
on that model poses a problem in society.

It stings whenever Google gets credit over OSM for serving underserved 
communities [2], because I’m sure they’re only getting served as part of 
the “everybody else” market segment. If we’re looking for ulterior 
motives, then you could say that corporations get involved with OSM 
because it commoditizes geodata. As it happens, sometimes I get a blank 
stare until I point out that OSM levels the playing field for businesses 
just getting started in an otherwise prohibitively expensive market. 
Even if someone is sold on OSM for this reason, I still want them to 
participate in OSM too.

[1] http://notes.1ec5.org/archives/2019/01/02/grassroots.html
[2] https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat

-- 
Minh Nguyen <mxn at 1ec5.org>
Jabber: mxn at 1ec5.org; Blog: http://notes.1ec5.org/