[OSM-talk] Chain Store Cleanup

[Rob Nickerson]

On 1 May 2015 at 20:26, Johan C <osmned at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 2015-05-01 13:36 GMT+02:00 Rob Nickerson <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com>:
>
>> >I think eventually chains will see the >light, and publish their
>> locations in an >open format compatible manner. At >that point a quick
>> cross check with >OSM would clear up most of the >issues.
>> >
>>
>> Agree. Has anyone actually asked the retail chains?
>>
>> That's a good question Rob. 'Seeing the light' possibly means maintaining
> your own platform/apps as a business. I did ask McDonald's back in 2012, I
> got the following reply: "We put focus on optimizing this McDonald's app
> and want to keep the management of the associated database as efficiently
> as possible. Keeping databases for others makes that ambition tricky. With
> the McDonald's app we also communicate information about McDonald's
> products, actions, nutrition values, different locations and opening times
> of the restaurants and the McDrives. Also, restaurant renovations and
> therefore temporary adjusted opening hours are regularly incorporated into
> an update. For the above reasons, we will not consent to the inclusion of
> McDonald's restaurants in Openstreetmap."
>
> Of course I was disappointed, because I still believe OSM can be the best
> platform. On the other hand, McDonald's has a point. Breaking the answer
> down: 1) It's not efficient trying to maintain more than one database 2)
> that single database serves more purposes than just geocoding 3) Other
> databases do not have the same quality.
>

Glad to hear that you have had a go at contacting one of these big chains.
Their response is disappointing but I think we need to be looking at some
potential solutions and better explaining the benefits of being on
OpenStreetMap to them.

Tackling the benefits of being in OSM first. I would point out that because
OpenStreetMap provides a rich database of geographic features there are
many apps that use OpenStreetMap's data. For example Maps.Me uses OSM in
it's SatNav style app for iOS and Android. Their app also displays
clickable points of interest including fast food outlets. Right now
OpenStreetMap includes some McDonald's stores (as contributed by our
community) but may be missing some. If McDonald's was to provide locations
of all stores then we could update our map data and as such all apps that
use our data would pick up these additional stores when they next update.

As for tackling some of their concerns then first the opening hours
concern. We could offer to link to their website for each store via
opening_hours:url=http://bigchainstore.com?storeid=12345 . As for keeping
the database up to date this is where we would benefit from more conflation
tools. For example it would be great if we had a tool that compares
BigChainStores data dump month 1 against BigChainStores data dump month 2
(should be easier as most entries will be the same). We would also want a
tool that compares BigChainStores data dump against what's already in OSM.
Currently there is no user firendly tool to do this (you end up back in
traditional GIS solutions which tend to go over my head).

I think we can get there but we'd need someone to help in regards to the
comparison tools.

Best,
Rob
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