And the OSM foundation does already exist:
Which maps are you talking about?
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Merchandise#Amazon
Hopefully I've thrown them about £50 over the past couple of years by bookmarking them as my link to Amazon.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Tavon,+Coredo+TN,+Italy&hl=en...
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/46.3652/11.0953&layers=...
And worryingly, Google has removed that layer entirely from their mobile application.
[1]: http://www.undispatch.com/how-afghan-mappers-punked-apple [2]: http://blog.openstreetmap.de/wp-uploads//2013/10/a2.png
Incidentally, if you have any, even mild, OCD tendencies, you might want to avoid Openstreetmap, haha. That new Id editor is dangerous.
People will say they support open-source via certain projects but the proof is in the pudding.
If they're using OSM data to cement one of their key platform apps, they need to donate money, lots of it, and be public about it.
Remember, as fanboys like to crow, Apple has $100 billion of cash lying around and Google's share price is sky high.
None of those things are intrinsically wrong or bad- if they weren't so competitive, they probably wouldn't have all that money in the first place, and as users we might not have any sort of maps at all on the Internet, or much lower-quality ones.
None of those things are intrinsically correct or good either, as users would surely benefit from that type of cooperation. It's just The Way It Is.
I wish the type of collaboration you describe could happen, and maybe it will some day. It's easy to anthropomorphize corporations as super rich individuals who sell stuff to people and aren't beholden to anyone, which is exactly what the tech press does most of the time, but the reality is way more complicated.
I'm surprised that you're surprised, It's not really typical for Apple to improve an open source solution instead of build and lock their own. Or am I unaware of Apple contributions here and there?
Apple is very sensitive about licenses, e.g. they've stopped updating OS X's GNU tools 6 years ago to avoid GPL v3.
OSM's ODBL is share-alike, so Apple probably didn't like having risk of share-alike apply to their proprietary data.
They are exceptions in the sense that most of their software is proprietary, but they're still important core components. They also distribute a couple hundred open source packages with OS X: http://www.apple.com/opensource/
Apple is very sensitive about licenses, e.g. they've stopped updating OS X's GNU tools 6 years ago to avoid GPL v3.
I only know what's reported here on HN, but they mostly seem sensitive about copyleft, not open source in general.
OSM's ODBL is share-alike, so Apple probably didn't like having risk of share-alike apply to their proprietary data.
But they do use OSM data: https://twitter.com/openstreetmap/statuses/19810151220183449...
As they should be. The fact that they stopped updating because of GPL doesn't mean they don't support open source. Lot's of people will support MIT and BSD licenses, but not GPL3.
I.e either Apple want to sue people for using software technology which Apple themselves would distribute freely under an MIT/BSD license.
Or they do not want support open source projects with all the code related to those projects. I think this is the more likely culprit, which is in line with pornel comments that Apple probably didn't like having risk of share-alike apply to their proprietary data.
(Of course, if you are talking about distributing MIT/BSD software binaries vs GPLv3, all the other parts of GPLv3 need to be considered. This post only address the willingness to support open source projects with source code.)
The 10% use cases I was referring to are the "I want to find generic type of business in this area" case, and the "I need a street view of this" case, both of which are (for me) comparatively rare versus searching for a post-code or known address.
Isn't that the definition of "good enough"? If it were truly awful, then she'd be forced to look up an alternative, because it'd never work. So it must work well enough for her.
These anecdotes about typing "20 Jay Street" and ending up at Niagara Falls are kind of silly. That's been my experience of all mapping applications, and, regardless of whether it happens more in Apple Maps (I'm sure it does!), the solution is so obvious I never even think about it; I just further qualify the address. "20 Jay Brooklyn" in Apple Maps, right next to a coffee roasting place near the bridge.
That said, while I use Apple Maps for the vast majority of the time, for certain non-major/obvious addresses, I find myself double-checking in GMaps.
What's really frustrating is that it throws out any errors at all in major cities like SF!
It still has a pretty useless database of locations. The listings for many shops/venues in my area are literally years (sometimes decades) out of date, even after I reported them back when iOS 6 was a beta. This is slowly improving, seemingly starting with locations that are commonly visited, but it's still not there. However, given that most of my use cases are "Enter post (ZIP) code, go there", this doesn't really matter. 90% of the time, Apple maps works fine, and there's no reason to use something else, especially when it's ad-laden.
Given that maps are not a core concern for Apple, I've always been surprised they've not just thrown money at improving open street maps. A few hundred million to setup an "OSM foundation" (or fund an existing one) could seriously help them (decent free mapping database to use), and hurt Google (major commercial advantage limited/eliminated). They could probably get MS onboard as well.