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.