Open street maps was already good, but we will see where this goes
Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon have launched their open-source mapping project
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808274/meta-microsoft-amazon-overture-open-source-mapping
Discussion
Oh man, trying to use open street maps on a pinephone was terrible. This will be a welcome maps for foss folks.
But why don't they just contribute to OpenStreetMaps. This just seems like another case corporate capture of a community project.
Probably because Open street maps wasn't good enough to offer even a start tbh.
I was assuming because they are using the same license as OpenStreetMaps and the fact that Amazon has already been contributing data to OpenStreetMaps that they are basically starting by copying OpenStreetMaps which is fine as long as they make an effort to push data upstream. I found a article from OpenStreetMaps about the issue, they seem cautiously optimistic about collaboration with them so hopefully this will be a win for open maps for everyone.
I dont think it was that bad (using Organic Maps on CalyxOS), maybe it was because im in a fairly well documents state.
Yeah I love OSM but I have travelled all over the country using it as my primary map and the roads and trails are generally marked well because they have been able to get that from public records. But typical experience in almost all of small town America was maybe 5% of the businesses would be marked and often not updated for years so even if it is marked you still need to double check it on google maps. But for hiking and exploring there is a ton of useful and interesting details. Like I was hiking in the black hills and they had all sorts old abandoned mining sites and tunnels marked on the map.