According to the community’s statistics, the numbers have almost doubled since April 2008. This is almost certainly to do with the massive growth in popular interest during 2007. There has scarcely been a week since early 2008, when there hasn’t been some media coverage, at least in Germany, of the project. Above all, this has to do with the Web 2.0 concept of this project.

Brought to life in summer 2004 by the Brit Steve Coast, its goal has been to build a collaborative, freely accessible geo-database.  Since then, anyone can access and involve themselves with up-to-date global surveys, and contribute their GPS-generated data (on hikes, bicycle tours, vacations) and submit the gathered data (streets, rivers, forests, footpaths or buildings etc.) to the OSM project.  Users can add all and any data that may be of cartographic interest, known as “Mapping”.  Users without GPS-capable devices are also welcome, being able to contribute by checking, updating/completing, approving and labeling photo material or working on the software interface.

As the community is itself responsible for generating/creating extensive information in this way, it also possesses copy- and other rights, and is able to negotiate for the use thereof.  This means, all registered users are able to share in the use of the data at no extra cost, and are able to process and transform the data as desired, also for commercial purposes.  The resulting data must however also be license-free, and credit OSM as the data source.  A specific plus, is that users are not only able to use the maps, but can also access the geodata in raw format. This is in stark contract with other map services such as Google Maps. As discussed by OSM in their FAQs, Google provides its maps free of charge, but without access to the related geodata.  The Google material is only useable as presented.

During the last four years, the project has grown amazingly. Of course, there are radical differences in the depth of coverage of different regions, resulting from the collaborative dependence on the users.  Consequently, many large cities in Germany are covered in much greater detail than by OSM’s alternatives.  One can find such information such as mailboxes, bus stops, recycling containers or cafés on OSM. On the flip side, many rural areas show large gaps in material– many streets are even missing, or end ‘nowhere’, small communities appear to be non-existent, and even in smaller town only major roads may be documented.  Even less documented are enormous swathes across the globe.

In Germany and many wealthy industrialized nations, the data deluge will certainly expand exponentially, in contract to less-developed countries, where computer coverage, internet access and GPS-ownership is sorely lacking.