[willrobinson]

Credit to Mapquest for opening their data to all and giving OSM a big push forward.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Google Maps started with public data. Data you tradtionally could find in public and university libraries and from government sources, even before the web existed. And then what they found crawling the web. They saw the potential value and have just added to and improved it a great deal.

But they did not start from zero. Nor has Apple.

Do not underestmate the "free" contributions to this type of data. It is not insignificant. It really should be open. In my opinion.

[rmc]

Are you sure about that? Outside the USA (which has a nice "lots of government work is public domain" rule, which lots of countries lack), there is very little 'freely available' map data from countries. One of the first non-USA countries on Google Maps, the UK, even now does not have freely available map data from the government (this is partially why it was people in the UK who set up OSM)

[willrobinson]

I am sure about what I said in my comment, not what you've said in yours. I said they started with free data. And indeed they started with data on the US, not the UK. Everyting begins at home. My point is Maps did not start from zero. Public data got the ball rolling.

I cannot say for sure but I would guess it is also what spurred the ideas to bring in a guy they knew who was doing related work at Stanford and also to acquire what became Google Earth. I believe it all began working with public data. They have obviously added lots of proprietary data since that time. They have a massive amount of cash to spend. Far more than the libraries and government agencies in the US who have the public data.