Yeah, and Wikipedia, linux,... have become important as well, without big corpo
This article is about global electricity production, not all energy combined. This is an important nuance, as much energy consumption uses fossil fuels directly, namely cars, many (older) house or industrial processes. Only a small fraction of this is electricity, and in the grander scheme, the "renewable" part is only a fraction: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption.
So, while this is a step in the good direction, it is only a very small one.
@BlackLaZoR@[email protected] would you mind updating the title to reflect this?
How can we make sure their privacy claims about search aren't bullshit?
(I still trust them though, just pointing out it is an equivalent problem)
Someone might take pictures of benches and another one will add the info if there’s a backrest from home.
What about https://mapcomplete.org/benches ? Granted, it does not upload to Wikimedia commons - but then again, Wikimedia commons isn't the right place for thousands of (mediocre) pictures of mor or less identical benches. A picture there should be "qualitative" and either "educational" or "relevant".
You can see, edit and close notes on https://Mapcomplete.org/notes . You can also edit the map and add new points with MapComplete as well, within many thematic maps.
There is no good, only "good for".
OsmAnd and Organic Maps are both tools to solve different problems in a different way. For some usecases and users, one will be better then the other.
But: OsmAnd also improved their UX a lot in the past few years, so that helps!
There is a (somewhat) active community here too: [email protected]
If someone wanted to add data, they would be more likely to deal with a slightly unfamiliar UI.
No. Many people are interested in adding bits of map data, but are scared by confusing UI. That is pretty much the point of mapcomplete. For example, some emergency response rooms in Belgium have added AEDs precisely because it is simple to use. They won't bother to deal with JOSM or even iD!
(I typed out an answer before, but it seems like it wasn't posted)
do you believe in OSM as a project?
Yes, definitively. It is widely used and known, many successful companies are alive based on the data and it is getting known.
What do you think its long term goal should be or even is?
To collect and publish geodata about the world - or at least about all somewhat-permanent objects that are located on this world. And we are succeeding at that pretty much!
Completely replace something like Google Maps?
It depends on what you precisely mean with "Google Maps". Google Maps is, first and foremost, an advertisement vector, disguised as a map. For many consumers, it is a map service which has lots of information about shops (including reviews and pictures) + navigation with traffic information.
So, some OSM-based apps might replace some of the services Google Maps offers, but many things (reviews, traffic information and pictures) are clearly out of scope for OSM (but can be filled in by Mangrove.reviews, mapillary or geovisio).
Having everyone use it as the main platform for looking at a map?
This is not the goal of OSM and should not be it. Have every map-app being based on OSM-data would be nice though. It'll bring other problems though, such as fighting spam and fake shops...
I sometimes wonder if OSS projects should have aims that ambitious.
Eh, it depends on how the OSS-project is structured. Is there an organisation behind it that lives from it and can make money of it, to fund it? Is it a hobby project?
The aims and ambitions are to be decided by the project maintainers and all people involved. Many OSS-projects and volunteer organisations can be thought of as being a do-ocracy. Hackerspaces are a good example of that, and a good intro to the concept can be found here: https://hackerspace.design/
I run MapComplete a bit the same. I do the stuff that I either want to make or where I can get funding for in some way (thanks NlNet!). If someone passes by with a feature request, my reply often is that I don't have time, but feel free to make it yourself.
I can’t imagine a world in which people would all be using open and free standards, and I think it’s because I’ve become so accustomed to the commercial aspect of developing software as things currently stand. What I think I might be asking for is actually your overview and opinion on OSM as a project and what we could expect of it, going forward.
In my opinion, Open Source grows at a slower pace, but is more sustainable (or the project dies and gets forgotten). On the other hand, there are - for some pieces of software - incentives by the closed-source projects - to switch people over, to keep the money flowing, so it is an uphill battle.
Some shameless advertising: there is an OpenStreetMap-community on lemmy: [email protected]
Hijacking the thread:
You are all welcome on [email protected] to discuss anyting OpenStreetMap-related
Also have a look to https://mapcomplete.osm.be - this one works on mobile and desktop and has many thematic maps (e.g. one for shops, one for cycling stuff, one for toilets) and you can improve the data there as well + add images.
The seach engine tries to infer the correct administrative area based on points. This is known behaviour of ~~nominatim~~ some search engines but doesn't mean that the data is incorrect