Trying To Fill In The Gaps On Google Street View, Starting With Zimbabwe | Hacker News Reader

Trying To Fill In The Gaps On Google Street View, Starting With Zimbabwe

npr.org

37 pointsneom15 comments

If you'd like to do this and aren't comfortable giving your work away without getting anything in return, you can try right now:

https://mapillary.com which gives you free access to everything you've uploaded. All images can be used to contribute to OpenStreetMap.

https://openstreetcam.org where all images are under CC-By-SA so can be used by everyone.

In my experience, the OpenStreetCam app is a bit buggy. Mapillary is good.

> Mushkegowuk Council, in northern Ontario, paid him to document the network of ice roads

It's immoral, and I hope also illegal, to use public money to donate exclusive use of a work to a private entity, let alone a for-profit.

Whoever is responsible for this should be told about OpenStreetMap and then sued into oblivion if they don't make up by following the open data policy https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data-principles .

You are right, but I’d see a tipping point where the money is better used by bringing better maps to services people actually use, effectively improving their life.

It would be no different from straight paying Google so they map the streets for instance.

It could be argued its a pragmatic choice to have the most impact on people’s life.

The pragmatic choice for a government is to pay someone to map the roads, and require the output to be open data. That open data benefits citizens is pretty much a given at this point.

If the government then wants to work with commercial vendors of maps to integrate that data, then that is fine too. They can use the open data set just like anyone else, or the government could pay them to integrate that data if there is no intrinsic commercial interest in doing so.

Google can, and does, use open data in their products.

Indeed. Google Maps is also known to copy OSM without attribution (which is illegal, but not yet proven so clearly that I would be on a lawsuit).

So spending money to add roads to Google Maps is just stupid, because if you add them to OSM it's much faster and Google Maps will get them anyway.

> Google Maps is also known to copy OSM without attribution (which is illegal, but not yet proven so clearly that I would be on a lawsuit).

Not only would attribution be required, but OSM does (for some use cases) have a share-alike clause. It could result in Google having to release their Google Maps data for OSM to use. So I'd be _really_ surprised if they did that, and I'd assume they'd be strict about making sure it's not imported.

If you have evidence, I'm sure the OSM community would be _very_ interested in hearing it.

They don't cover this in the article, it's just linked from it, but while it is free labor for Google, all the imagery taken by the camera is owned by the photographer and only what is uploaded to the street view app is licensed to Google. They could also upload it to OpenStreetMap and Mapillary.

https://www.google.com/intl/None/streetview/loan/terms/ (see Minimum Imagery and Ownership and Use of Images)

Yes, and they should.

But let's quote the actual terms of use (https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en#toc-content ):

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When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

----

Considering the "limited purpose" is as vast as the services Google offers (is there anything Google doesn't do?), and that there's infinite sublicensing potential, this is not a narrow license. It's good that it's not exclusive in theory, but in practice Google is the only one able to use all of that content.

> It's good that it's not exclusive in theory

What does that even mean? It's a non exclusive license. "In practice" you still own the pictures and can do whatever you want with them.

I understand his desire, but Alphabet group has billions. He should not be doing this for free.

My exact thought. And shame on Alphabet for not providing any compensation to someone so dedicated to their platform, even if willing to work for free.

all of his images are now the property of google. if for some reason he or anyone else wants to use these images at some point in the future for some sort of project he would have to pay google a fee. that idea seems so bizarre to me especially when there are a few different services that will do the same thing but instead the images would be available to everyone.

how does someone plan out such a huge project like he did without looking around to see what the alternatives are? maybe mapillary need to up their marketing a notch

Hopeless to monetize and nobody will use the other services leading to just doing it on the service with less egalitarian rights

And thats okay.

Amazing that someone would choose to work for a huge American corporation for no fee instead of providing the data to anyone who wants it.

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