We had the opportunity to speak with Steve Coast, the Founder of OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Cloud Made as well as The Fake Steve Coast. Prior to creating OSM and Cloud Made, the real Steve Coast interned at Wolfram Research then pursued a degree in computer science and physics at the University of College, London. Known and respected highly for his work on geo webs, the real Steve Coast enlightened us in with his thoughts on crowdsourcing, datasharing, open source and the future of the Geo Web. Although there wasn’t any public information about The Fake Steve Coast, we couldn’t resist hearing his thoughts also.

FortiusOne: What perspective does OpenStreetMap take on GIS?

Steve Coast: It’s the Church, we’re the Bazaar. OSM is about community and getting people to map boring places on a Sunday afternoon and in many ways the technology just doesn’t matter - all it has to do is get out of the way. There’s a lot to GIS, there’s a lot of very valid uses, but we don’t have the same notions of top down ontologies and the other engineering paradigms about doing things the Right Way.

The Fake Steve Coast: We like to think of GIS as being like Mad Uncle Jim. He should shave a bit more often and no-one really understands what he’s on about, but he’s fairly harmless, and he’ll die soon anyway.

FortiusOne: How does crowdsourcing impact datasharing?

Steve Coast: Well, we’ll reduce the price of the base map data to zero much as

linux reduced the price of an operating system to zero. I think that will make people realise that their datasets aren’t all as valuable as they think - much as Sun open sourced their OS and languages. Thus with a bit of luck there will be more sharing, liberal licenses and innovation based on all that.

The Fake Steve Coast: We see datasharing as one of the three types of Free. There’s "free as in beer", that’s Google Maps and the top-down approach. There’s "free as in speech", that’s us and crowdsourcing. Datasharing is "free as in BitTorrent", which is some guy in Russia "rehosting" the $3bn spatial database you’ve spent your lifetime on. Sorry about that.

FortiusOne: How do you picture the future relationship between open source and commercial data?

Steve Coast: I think it will look like much of the OS market. Hybrid models such as

Mac OS X - based on many Free projects, closed like Microsoft and almost totally open like Linux. In some markets the race to the bottom will happen just like it is right now with cell phone operating systems.

The Fake Steve Coast: atlasteq:~ wget http://planet.openstreetmap.org/planet-latest.osm

atlasteq:~ sed -e ’s/user="[^"]+"/user="atlasteq"/g’ planet-latest.osm> ourbigproprietarydb.gis

FortiusOne: What is the future of commercial data?

Steve Coast: More liberal licensing, accepting changes from customers (note customers, not community. It’s going to be way harder for them to build that), cheaper, more differentiation with different types and styles of maps.

The Fake Steve Coast: Pwned.

FortiusOne: Please describe the relationship between OSM and CloudMade.

Steve Coast: Much the same as RedHat and other Linux product and service provides’ relationship with various F/OSS projects. We help wherever we can and provide commercially the things that the community cannot. Reliability, scaling, data in different formats/projections, services with time constraints and so on.

The Fake Steve Coast: CloudMade is like the Navy Seals of collaborative mapping. We hire the supermen of OSM and pay them to work on the really hard stuff, e.g. installing Mapnik. They’ve been at it for 9 weeks now and we reckon we might have the test script running in about a month’s time.

FortiusOne: What is the next big thing for the GeoWeb?

Steve Coast: Well many seem to think 3D but my money is on pervasive location - it won’t be a geoweb, it will just be that your phone knows you like burritos after going to a bar. It knows where you are and routes you to a burrito. It’ll disappear in to the background much like email, browsing, cell phones and so on. Who knew that SMS would be such a cash cow for cell phones in Europe? The model will probably be something slightly askance like that, and then it will have been totally obvious all along.

The Fake Steve Coast: Germans. We’re ahead of the curve there. Although Germans don’t do curves, they do really, really precise polylines.

FortiusOne: What do you see as the successful business model for the GeoWeb?

Steve Coast: Advertising has potential as does services - but with the big three not really interested in making money nobody else can be. Expect a shake down if and when they are interested in paying the rent.

The Fake Steve Coast: Buy big monster truck. Mount camera and GPS on top. Drive around world in it. Sell result to Google for $$$$ before they realise people will do this for you, for free. Sell truck to Nokia for $$$$ before they realise people etc. etc. Retire to Caribbean.

FortiusOne: What is next for OpenStreetMap?

Steve Coast: Our conference is coming up (www.stateofthemap.org) next month and we just screamed past 43,000 users. So expect our first crowd source country to be completely mapped (likely Germany or the UK) and a big celebration when it happens.

The Fake Steve Coast: We have this great new deal with Nestoria, the real estate site who use our data. In return for giving them free data, they give us free house moves, so when you’ve mapped your neighbourhood they just relocate you somewhere unmapped.

Which is great, until we finish Europe and have to move to Zimbabwe. Maybe we should get aerial imagery instead.

FortiusOne: What do you think of Google’s new MapMaker?

Steve Coast: I really do believe it’s a poke at their own data suppliers and it’s them that should be more worried than us. OSMs fundamental reasons for existence remain more than intact. We didn’t down tools because of the Peoples Map and we won’t when the next proprietary dataset emerges.

The Fake Steve Coast: So this is 2008 and they finally have an editor that doesn’t work properly, aerial images that don’t line up with the vectors, edit wars in Cyprus and Pakistan, dodgy coastlines, confusion between mph and km/h. We’ve had all those advantages for years now.

But obviously we’re concerned. If MapMaker can combine the success of Orkut, the ethical policy of google.cn, the reliability of Google Groups, the rich feature set of Blogger, the respect for source copyright of YouTube, and the widespread impact of Knol, we’re laughing. Sorry, I mean ’screwed’.

Seriously. We started OSM in 2004 because though Ordnance Survey had a complete map of Britain, it wasn’t open. In 2012 Google might have a complete map of the world but it won’t be open either. The world still needs OSM.

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We had the opportunity to catch up with James Fee at Spatially Adjusted and Planet Geospatial to get his opinion on the current and future state of GIS and the GeoWeb. James is a certified GIS Professional (GISP) and GIS developer, analyst, and consultant and has spent the last decade implementing, developing and consulting on GIS projects. He has experience with almost all of the large players in the geospatial field such as ESRI, MapInfo, Manifold, OSGeo (MapServer, GDAL, QGIS, OpenLayers), MapDotNet, Oracle, Microsoft and Google.

FortiusOne: Where do you see GIS going in the next 10 years?

James Fee: I think data and collaboration will be huge in the next 10 years.  The explosion of Neogeography and projects such as OpenStreetMap have brought many new faces into GIS.  Not only are we seeing spatial data being pushed out to the public at large, but this data is beginning to be integrated into GIS workflows.  We’ll begin to see metadata and documentation of these datasets as well making them very valuable.  

While freely sharing data has been great, the next logical step is allowing companies to monetize their datasets, share as easily.  The ability to pay and use data services should revolutionize the industry.  The price of data hasn’t really been a limiting factor yet, but the difficulty of integrating these datasets into online mapping or even in desktop GIS has hurt adoption.  In addition the speed of geospatial data services has been poor so moving these services into the Cloud should improve performance and increase profitability given that there is no need for large overhead (such as servers, or bandwidth).

FortiusOne: Will there be convergence between GIS and the GeoWeb to the point that they become indistinguishable?

James Fee: Possibly, I think this have been the holy grail that everyone has been trying to attain.  GIS by its nature is complex and you generally need complex solutions to complex problems.  That said I think we’ll see many operations that were the domain of GIS begin to be part of the GeoWeb.  Basic geoprocessing over the web via an easy-to-use interface can satisfy a vast number of use cases of general users without hitting them over the head with a steep learning curve.  

Usually moving GIS to general uses has been by giving them the kitchen sink and expecting them to figure it out.  Simple solutions to their “simple” problems is how we’ll see GIS and the GeoWeb converge.  Over time more and more “complex” analysis will be available to use by just about anyone with a computer, but I’m not sure we’ll see that in the next 10 years.

FortiusOne: Do datasharing and crowdsourcing have a place in GIS?

James Fee: Yes, but the problem is how do you give GIS professionals the ability to use the data and make decisions about its accuracy.  I guess it brings up the question, do you trust a Biologist in the field with at GPS more than a hobbyist?  I’d guess most GIS professionals would pick the Biologist, but a degree in Biology doesn’t mean the data is necessarily good.  

Datasharing and crowdsourcing are great ideas but for GIS to use them, they need metadata, documentation, and possibly a rating system.  A “marketplace” should allow users to rate the quality and accuracy of the data which both helps others make decisions about the data and gives feedback to the creator on how they can improve their dataset.  OpenStreetMap has been a great example on how “experts” can help “novices” grow to be experts in data collection.

FortiusOne: Should there be a marketplace for online geodata?  

James Fee: Totally, I think there has to be.  First off, you need some place users can feel comfortable buying data.  Second you need a place where data can be rated and reviewed.  Third you need a place where data providers can put their information in the cloud for quick and easy access buy everyone.  If someone is investing time and energy into creating their data, I don’t see any reason they can’t be rewarded for this.  

I think some data will be available via micropayments and other data will be very expensive (or the ability to pay for read only data vs editable data).  Having some place where users can go to both sell and buy data, search for data, and review data is critical today.  Sure Google will index spatial data, but being able to go to a focused marketplace will put buyers and sellers together quickly.  And at least today, any site that sells data should be compatible with ESRI software.  Offering up data types that aren’t compatible with ESRI will limit any marketplace.

FortiusOne: What emerging technology trend will have the biggest impact on GIS?

James Fee: I think putting a GPS in so many “ordinary” things is going to impact GIS immensely.  Walking around with a GPS in your phone should give you access to many GIS applications, digital cameras and video cameras with GPS will spatially enable tons of datasets.  

FortiusOne: What is your reaction to the Google – ESRI announcement?

James Fee: We’ll have to see what impact this really has.   It isn’t revolutionary the idea that Google might index GIS servers, the hard part is getting all these traditional ESRI clients to open up their data is the challenge.  They’ll need to see the benefit to allowing users to view their data in any way they choose rather than the traditional hard to use ESRI web mapping front end.  

FortiusOne: What impact will Google have on GIS?

James Fee: Google has already had a huge impact on GIS.  At a minimal level, it has already allowed GIS users to search for data sets.  Google Maps has totally changed how web mapping is used and displayed on the internet, Google Earth has pushed 3D GIS to the mainstream and now their geo search 2.0 and geo sitemaps they pushing spatial searching.  Google has been really good about getting spatial data in front of everyone in a way everyone can use it.  GIS has learned much from this and the new tools coming out by ESRI, Autodesk, etc. all are very “Google-like”. 

Popularity: 28% [?]

Mapufacture shows off some new functionality which includes adding layers of data. With improved layering and editing options, users will be able to visualize data in a whole new way.

Microsoft has declared “geotagging has gone mainstream”. Microsoft Pro Photo and the power of metadata are discussed by Dan Catt.

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GIS Lounge shares a post that advocates the use of Google Earth over GIS mapping applications for its ease of use in sharing archaeological and paleontological data.

Popularity: 25% [?]