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 😁
Is there an open street map based map app that shows live traffic? I’m trying to get my grandfather to switch to open source, and he says it’s the one feature he needs.
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 @[email protected] pointed out and is based on OSM, but is not itself open source.
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.
MagicEarth has got a live traffic layer for you.
If it is free as in beer, but not as in freedom, and is developed by a company, then what is their business model?
This is what they’ve put on their FAQ
Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.
Unfortunately, it’s not open source though.
Indeed it isn’t. But is privacy focused and sort of the best next thing.