this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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If they used Google maps, Niantic would have to pay Google. That's no Bueno. Why pay for content critical to your apps success when you could just freeload on volunteers work instead?
I know this seems like Niantic is free-loading, but this is intentionally-allowed by the ODbL license and honestly, might be a good business decision even without considering the licensing fees. OSM is almost 20 years old and as a community led project, is probably more predictable and stable than a Google license which could change drastically from one contract to the next.
As a OSM contributor, I'm more than happy to see my work used this way, and as @[email protected] pointed out, OSM has seen a lot of benefit too.
Don't get any changes reviewed before , you know, really replacing map data ? I'm just curious. There are a lot of players worldwide, I can imagine the game going strong for another few years and OSM ending up choke full of areas that were pokemon'd and made unusable.
"Made unusable": that's not how it works. Even with occasional vandalism, there's so much more people positively contributing, that overall the map just keeps on getting better and better.