Re:It’s Time to Make OpenStreetMap Your Only Street Map
by stephen_g on Monday February 03, 2014 @11:33PM
(#7175514)
This is very true. My country's Government had an issue with a major internet project where they bought the best commercial address database available. Turns out that hundreds of thousands of addresses in there were incorrect, and tens of thousands just didn't exist. Caused huge problems.
Proprietary geospatial data can be very hit and miss. If you assume that the majority will be high quality, you're setting yourself up for disappointment...
What this viewpoint does hint at is it's comparison to Wikipedia, and the differences in geospatial data of a current map of the world. Pekk is correct, an area in OSM needs to be continually updated and refreshed, and this requires appropriate tools and a user base. Both of these exist or are being improved upon with OSM.
For example, work has happened re: Monitoring of changes, comparisons with imagery, map bug reports, automated feeds, academic and industry reports and evaluations of the quality with proprietary and national mapping agency datasets.