Map and location data plays such a fundamental role across society today, powering everything from IoT (internet of things) devices and self-driving cars, to logistics and big data visualization tools. Thus, having all that data under the auspices of just one or two mega-firms can be hugely restrictive in terms of what companies can do with the data, not to mention the costs involved in licensing it.
“Mapping the physical environment and every community in the world, even as they grow and change, is a massively complex challenge that no one organization can manage,” noted the Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin in a