> Apple sponsoring and improving OSM would actually be the smartest and best way out of this debacle

I like to be thinking that, but being aware of me liking that thought, I'm asking myself: would I actually do so being some Apple executive? And I'm not sure I would. I do think that being community-supported is really, really great, and OSM has a pretty good community too. I'm a big opensource proponent, so it's easy for me to say, but I also think having their maps (software and data) free (as in GNU, yeah) wouldn't harm Apple, given the map is not their unique product they are selling. And being a native supporter of something that could be wikipedia for maps would be huge. So, yeah… yay OSM?

But, with all that said: IMO, OSM is a huge organizational mess. Giving them money & satellites, and then just expecting it will all "solve itself out" isn't really something I would do being responsible for Apple Maps. For starters, it's not like all OSM community members automatically become Apple employees, you're basically donating to somebody over whom you won't have any leverage. What's more important, it's not clear what it the goal of the donation, what OSM is expected to do with that? And how it will serve Apple? Their priorities seem to be quite off, OSM doesn't give a shit about any "product" whatsoever, they are just guys passionate about collecting all sorts of geo-data into databases nobody ever uses (at least, as far as OSM is concerned, they are the database: they don't make apps). And it's even questinable if such way of collecting data is the way to go in the age of imaging satellites, widely accepted spyware on every phone, ML and "big data".

And it's not like this is cheap, any way it would be done. And, no offense, but "partnering" with OSM wouldn't be exactly partnering. OSM doesn't have managers, engineers or cartographers any better than Apple can hire, all they have is community, which wouldn't even be OSM community anymore, if Apple rolls out a better (and more accessible) open geo-spatial DB than OSM has. Which, I believe, they are capable of.

Couldn’t they just fork OSM? If OSM wants to merge, go for it. Otherwise we have a new opensource map project. Not sure why we care if the original project lives or dies.

I guess they could. But since they have to do everything themselves anyway, why bother? I'm not sure about the legal aspect, but even so, I'm pretty sure Apple can use OSM's data in one way or another would they need to (in fact, article states that they did use it in the earlier versions of the map). And since they are making the map on their own, nothing forces them to open-source the DB right now: should they decide that it will be beneficial they can do it any time in the future. And should they decide it isn't: they just don't.

Yes they could. The OSM licence requires a share-alike, so OSM would be able to use anything Apple add, but all that's required is a database dump. It would be up to the OSM community to "merge" it back in if they wanted.

WebKit is Apple's project. It doesn't make sense to say WebKit gets back a lot because it's their own project. It's forked from KHTML, but hey nowadays even Konqueror uses WebKit.

And, given Apple's business model, which is selling hardware, one would think they could really afford to give back a bit more to open source.

OSM has some architectural baggage which is holding it down. until it is solved it can't compete with google maps ever.

also Apple need to bring alternate satellite image providers like ISRO, SpaceX