Linux Group Shares First Open Dataset for Google Maps Alternatives
upstart writes:
If you're not Google (or, to a much lesser extent, Apple), map apps are damned hard to make. Last year, several major heavy hitters in tech, including the likes of Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Amazon, decided to lay down their arms and meet under a flag of parlay held aloft by the Linux Foundation to make mapping just a little easier, cheaper, and less dominated by two companies. Alone, none could establish a big enough data pool to rival the likes of Google Maps, but with their individual hoards of business location data, satellite mapping tech, and more support from smaller tech firms, they could perhaps gather enough data together to help create a whole new series of up-to-date map apps.
On Wednesday, this pooled initiative, called the Overture Maps Foundation, shared its first alpha release for its mapping data. It contains millions of examples for buildings, roads, and geographic boundaries. It's only the first large release for the planned massive dataset, but the hope is there will be much more to come as companies sign on.
[...] "The hardest thing in mapping is knowing what's changed in the world," Prioleau told Gizmodo in a video chat. Essentially, map apps are some of the hardest to design simply because of the massive amount of data required to build the systems. Not only do they need to be accurate, but they need to be constantly updated when businesses close and new ones open.
The first Overture release contains about 59 million points of interest that the group claims has not yet been released as open data before. A POI could be anything-a public landmark, a specific building, or a local business. Otherwise, the data contains about 750 million building footprints alongside road data that's mostly collated from the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap project.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.