It feels like everyone is beholden to Google's mapping APIs. And while other sources are creeping up it seems like maybe a hosted openstreetmap api would be a great alternative. Just curious to know if it exists or if anyone would pay for such a thing.
OpenStreetMap folks just care about the data, I doubt anyone would begrudge someone making a proprietary service using open data - it's the data that's important, after all. The OSM Project is not looking to replace Google My Maps, or to have such a service on the main osm.org website.
Now, what you are looking for is probably something along the lines of uMap http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UMap which has something like a WTFPL license https://github.com/umap-project/umap/ and which is something I point people to. It's lacking the design flair of this product but it's probably a bit more feature rich.
OpenStreetMap is awesome but not really a map service, it hosts the open data and the map editor/wiki. You can use their map to a certain extend but if there was a huge spike in traffic, their site would fall. If you want a good service based on OSM with directions and more, you have to use something else such as mapquest which is US based or host it yourself.
There's also (I'm as surprised as you are) Mapquest. They have a whole host of open APIs now, built on OSM, and even have web services like directions/elevation: http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open
If only there was something like maps.google.com for OSM. Yes, there's openstreetmap.org but that doesn't have directions or location sharing. Also, if people started using it like maps.google.com, I'm sure the OSM project wouldn't be too happy, seeing as how tile serving on such a scale gets expensive fast.
Based on my research, most paid mapping services get expensive quickly with any serious load, even if you're just geocoding addresses. Also, if you want to do anything interesting with the data you're probably going to run afoul of your license agreement that says you can't combine their mapping data with data from other sources.
It opens up so many possibilities for small developers to create large scale mapping services that would have been prohibitively expensive or otherwise impossible. They also make it really easy to put together a quick proof-of-concept by hosting their APIs on numerous public servers with generous usage terms and no registration.
I'm working on a project right now that wouldn't be possible without OSM, for multiple reasons, so I definitely agree with the article's premise.
I think Maps.Me did something in that direction - but well, the quality of the underlying data varies wildly. Google can (and IMHO does) periodically pay for licensing the transport data, OSM doesn't do that (for cost and license compatibility, amongst other things). Not all PT authorities are amenable to open data :(
That's one reason (among many) I like OpenStreetMaps, since it has an API that lets you download subsets of data for offline usage, along with bulk dumps of the whole thing. Allows for all sorts of offline uses, not to mention data mining, that are impossible with Google Maps.
Man, I really like the ideas behind OSM and they have an amazing wealth of data. But someone really needs to fund a team to make a usable website and app suite. I would love to switch over to using OSM, but I've yet to find a website or app that comes even remotely close to the usability of Google Maps.
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