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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, OSM takes clear political stances and does not use internationally recognized borders when they should. That is antithetical to freedom (as in free software) and is why I would never donate to the project.

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There is a policy about this: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Disputed_territories

That policy is not uniformly applied. In some conflicts "realities on the ground" are mapped and visible, but not in others. The actual effective policy is whatever biases and prejudices OSMs contributors have.

I think this is what happens when you crowdsource things. Parts become a bit fragmented, because many different people work on them - so in effect, the product reflects the organization's structure that builds the product. Wikipedia also has this issue, on the English Wikipedia itself, and also when you look at the relations of the different language Wikipedias. I personally love these projects despite these issues.

Exactly. Which is why internationally recognized borders is the way to go. It's way better than having sensitive issues settled by what the members with the most clout in the community think because it, more or less, just codifies Western biases since most members are from Western countries.

What exactly are "internationally recognized borders"? There are countless disputes that half the world's countries see one way and the other half see another way. The UN doesn't help on this matter either, they don't often vote on borders and how they should be reflected in geospatial data.

When the term "internationally recognized borders" is used by a government or institution, it's almost always a buzzword to assist a specific agenda or to actualize a specific geopolitical alignment. It's not a technical term.

They have explicitly violated their own OTG rules with regards to Crimea.

Then they have reverted the later decision to uphold OTG rule[1] with "no explanation".

1. https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DW...

Any discussion about borders is fraught, and no matter what decision you make many people will be unhappy. I don't think it is useful to tie that to freedom

could you be more specific ?

If the Openstreetmap is a description of things that are visible, like built roads, buildings and named places.. How are disputed borders stopping the useful building of a map? Doesn't the United Nations and many Federal governments, have conventions for showing and discussing borders in dispute?

Why would disputed borders in some places, stop the (obviously) global project from continuing to map the real, physical place of Earth ?

Such as?

Not OP but I can give an example. Kosovo is recognized by 101 of 193 UN members. Something can be international recognized and still whatever option you show on a map you potentially anger half the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_K... . Somaliland isn't recognized by UN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somaliland There's 4 possible maps of Western Sahara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Western_Sa... Crimea is either Russian or Ukranian on some maps, for a while both in OSM

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