"They are specifically targetting govts and NGOs, offering to “map their country for free”, but keeping the results."

The problem is they're directly copying open data communities, and restricting the resulting data.

Mikel is a very prominent member of OpenStreetMap, which was largely credited with the mapping of Haiti after the earthquake. It may come off as a rant on first read, but he's not making exaggerated claims.

"The problem is they're directly copying open data communities"

Could you clarify that a bit for me please? It was unclear to me in the original as well. Is Google copying the data generated by open communities, then closing it with a restrictive license? Or is it copying the idea of community-generated maps?

One's an interesting story worth discussing. The other is silly; community-sourced maps is a fairly obvious idea.

The idea of community sourced mapped didn't originate with OSM either. Like any good open source project, we freely credit our inspirations and direct sources. Google however has lifted so many ideas with complete denial of any deep conceptual connections. It only seems proper to acknowledge your influences.

However the real problem is how G glosses over the particulars of their business practices, and paints them in the light of community projects. That's deceptive and damaging, not to OSM, but to communities unaware of the obscure details of data and API licensing.

It seems to me that acknowledging influences can be incredibly dangerous in our presently litigious patent environment.

I believe the problem is more like using their weight as a company to "steal" resources (volunteers, data from governments and what not) from the open initiative to generate a product that is closed.

Seen from that point of view and taking into account that Google has a history of censoring maps, I think it's not that silly an argument.

OSM doesn't own volunteer time. If the volunteers find Googles platform & terms more pleasing, then more power to them.

However, if the original article is correct in that Google misleads volunteers, then I hope his post helps correct that.

why are you accusing them of claiming they own volunteer time?

if someone has huge visibility, they can leverage it to gain more volunteer time at the expense of competing on platform & terms.

They are only copying the idea of a crowdsourced map.

Arguing that Google stole the idea of 'Mapping Parties' seems a bit silly. Claiming that OSM invented the idea of 'Mapping Parties' is even more ridiculous than claiming that Apple invented the term 'App Store'.

The argument that MapMaker is harmful to open source efforts has a bit more merit. With MapMaker users contribute mapping information for free without the ability to actually make use of that data later on. OpenStreetMaps on the other hand provides a Creative Commons license for all of the map data.

Regardless of who actually invented mapping parties, I felt that Google grabbing the idea and using it to promote it's closed community was really an example of his main thesis.

Imagine if Google held code sprints for it's commercial products and enticed people with t-shirts and bottled water, keeping their work for commercial use? Wouldn't you rather have those people participate in an open source project so that their volunteered time could be used by all rather than just Google?

There are two problems:

1) Google paying attention to a community is far more attractive than a bunch of open source guys.

2) Google Maps's UI is much better than Open Street Maps'.

The first is hard to fix, unless some open consortium showers attention on communities.

The second should be solvable by following the dictates of a couple of highly qualified designers who have much sharper eyes than 41Latitude.com, which already does a great job.

About 2. Google map ui is moot on places where you need off line access.

And using all the data you and others provided to google, but in an offline manner is illegal.

he's complaining that the communities that do much of the work end up losing the rights to the data.

We don't use OSM data on google maps.

OSM data isn't the issue. It sounds like Google is asking people to submit map data for free, then claiming ownership of that data.

This is exactly the problem. Google is not only asking people to submit map data for free, but basically giving the impression that the project itself is 'free' when in fact the people that submitted the data cannot use it 'freely'.