785

You can and you should contribute - Open Street Map (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by CoachDom@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

121 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Today I found out that it's actually a lot easier to contribute to Open Street Map than I thought. There are some serious gaps in house addresses in my area and I was painstakingly using the built in browser editor in the browser.

But, you can use a FOSS app (available on fdroid) called StreetComplete that makes it a lot easier to help out filling in the gaps in your local map data.

It's really fun - kind of like Pokémon Go but you are actually making an impact 😁

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] thejevans@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, unfortunately not. Getting traffic data would mean users volunteering to share location data, would need a centralized system to process everything, and would need a critical mass of users sharing said data to be anywhere near useful. The other possibility would be to pay for data from a provider like Google under an enterprise license that doesn't require sharing data back, but I don't know if that is even an option.

For now, I use both on my phone. I use OSM when biking or walking, I use Google Maps when driving, and I use my local transit web app when taking transit. I plan to switch my Pixel phone to GrapheneOS and to sandbox Google services that I still need. That being said, the ultimate way around needing traffic information is to try to live in places and in such a way that driving is not very necessary, but I know that is a huge ask for a lot of people.

EDIT: To be clear, MagicEarth does have live traffic as @Schlemmy@lemmy.ml pointed out and is based on OSM, but is not itself open source.

[-] sixfold@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago

time for some kind of anonymizing location data sharing service, peer to peer or federated protocol? that might be interesting, or sketchy, not sure which.

[-] cumberboi@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is OpenTraffic but it seems unfinished and not implemented anywhere as far as i can tell. Edit: just to clarify, ive only heard from others that it's unfinished, havent checked myself :)