except google. They copied OSM data in the past, and used in their proprietary offering that includes reselling the data. A blatant offense of the OSM license.

They were caught red handed in 2018 i think, and blamed on some contractors. But most interesting, despite this being a widely know fact for the mapping community, i can't find any mention of it anywhere today.

As hardcore-OSMer: this is pure FUD.

There are suspicions, but no hard proof has ever been found about this.

However, there is a well-known (and non-problematic) case where OSM-data is used in GMaps. Some polish bus agency used OSM to create their GTFS-feeds, which were ingested into GMaps. Selecting the bus line will thus show an OSM-based line layer; but as that line layer is clearly attributed with OpenStreetMap, that is totally fine; both legal and ethical. See https://twitter.com/MapAmorePH/status/1453863816110952450?t=...

As someone who has some first hand knowledge in the area, this is pure bullshit.

I don’t know what OP meant by “steal” but the complicated thing with using OSM data as a mapmaker is that if you “derive” any other data source with it you have to make it available which means (as I understand it) you have to contribute it back to OSM.

If TomTom was planning on conflating OSM data with other sources then in theory it hurts their business model because they will potentially have to make their entire map (or large parts of it) freely available in OSM.

If they can somehow set up clean room conditions and keep all their other data sources physically separated from the OSM data then it might be avoided, but then how do you do the map conflation? And that would certainly impact how quickly they can make updates.

Maybe they came up with some clever way to avoid having to contribute data back to OSM and that’s what OP means by “steal.”