Maps go open source!

Gasp!

What is this world coming to?

Now even maps are open source!

Like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap is a project that lets you - the bespectacled personage - edit publicly viewable reference data from the discomfort of your own home. OpenStreetMap attempts to be a detailed street map covering this here entire planet Earth.

OpenStreetMap was founded back in 2004, and last year it added street data from the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER service. But only now are peeps discovering OpenStreetMap.

I'd been making some minor forays into the map-drawing biz. I've drawn up some street maps for my area intended for bicyclists. If I was greedy, I could view OpenStreetMap as a threat to my business that must be halted at all costs.

But instead, I cope.

I deal with it.

I adapt.

The RIAA should learn a lesson. When online music sharing became possible, the RIAA did not adapt. It used every excuse in the book to get file sharing sites shut down. This hurt indie musicians and folks who only traded authorized files much more than it hurt those who copied music without permission. The RIAA not only was stuck in the pre-Internet era. By shutting down file sharing services, it was also using a pile driver to crush a gumball.

If I was greedy like the RIAA, I'd be screaming from the rooftops to have the big, mean OpenStreetMap shut down, and hiring folks to impersonate cops to raid its servers. But I'm not greedy like the RIAA. The theory behind OpenStreetMap is a good thing, for it brings more people to the wild party we call mapmaking. It generates more interest in cartography.

In fact, last night when I was told of OpenStreetMap's existence, I began making corrections to it for my area. I'm not going to publicize exactly where, because some Nazi will surely deface my edits.

Peep OpenStreetMap:

http://www.openstreetmap.org

Here's some of my revenue-generating bike maps for a handful of Cincinnati-area neighborhoods:

http://bunkerblast.info/maps