OSM started in 2004 as an effort to build a completely open street map of the world. It drew from the open source software movement, that called for all open code for software components, as well as the open data movement, that called for all generated data to be openly available to the public.

 

Ten years later, the OSM has a large community of users and a large collection of openly available data. Originally, OSM employed a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license, but changed to an Open Database License (ODbL) in 2012. This license allows users to share, use, and adapt the data from OSM as long as they use proper attribution, allow share-alike of adapted data, and keep the data open.

 

OSM is a complex, interrelated system of humans and technology. We have utilized a “GeoStack of OSM” model to break out this complicated socio-technical system into component pieces and their relationships. In addition to exploring social implications of OSM, including open data and humanitarian efforts, we examine issues with the socio-technical system such as data accuracy and diversity.