[OSM-talk] Countering Google's propaganda

Jean-Marc Liotier jm at liotier.org
Thu Dec 17 12:15:03 GMT 2009


The quality of OpenStreetMap's work speaks for itself, but it seems that 
we need to speak about it too - especially now that Google is attempting 
to to appear as holding the moral high ground by using terms such as 
"citizen cartographer" that they rob of its meaning by conveniently 
forgetting to mention the license under which the contributed data is 
held. But in the eye of the public, the $50000 UNICEF donation to the 
home country of the winner of the Map Maker Global Challenge lets them 
appear as charitable citizens. We need to explain why it is a fraud, so 
that motivated aspiring cartographers are not tempted to give away their 
souls for free. I could understand that they sell it, but giving it to 
Google for free is a bit too much - we must tell them. I'm pretty sure 
that good geographic data available to anyone for free will do more for 
the least developed communities than a 50k USD grant.

I answered this piece at ReadWriteWeb and I suggest that you keep an eye 
for opportunities to answer this sort of propaganda against libre mapping :
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_announces_map_contest_50k_for_adding_school.php#comment-175013





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