OpenStreetMap
Openstreetmap-Carto – Democracy Or anarchy?
Posted by Cristoffs on 17 May 2022 in Polish (Polski). Last updated on 18 May 2022.In the last year our Polish OpenStreetMap community started updating the data of parcel lockers and their locations in Poland. The popularity of these machines has significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate the increase in the number of these devices in Poland at around 3,000 per year. The mapping campaign and the hard work of many contributors have led to the fact that the OSM data in the case of the introduced parcel machines in Poland is much more accurate than the data that the operators of these machines have. At the moment, we have over 4,200 parcel machines introduced to OSM. So we have potentially another advantage in promoting OpenStreetMap in Poland. Unfortunately, we cannot use it, because the parcel lockers are not rendered on www.openstreetmap.org.
The Polish OSM community made a huge contribution to standardize tagging of these features in accordance with all community guidelines. The process was quite difficult because the comments were diverse (and strong) and it was impossible to take into account all of them. Proposa link These steps were time consuming, but eventually we were able to work out the tagging scheme accepted by the OSM community.
Unfortunately, we are not able to develop a solution that would be satisfying for people responsible for maintaining the CartoCSS stylesheet. All our attempts failed.Git hub discussion
That is why I would like to ask a few questions: Why in some areas of our community project do we have total autocracy instead of democracy? Should the OSMF not change the rules for introducing changes to the style to follow the trends and changes in the world around us? Don’t you have the impression that our Democracy is turning into Anarchy?
Feel free to discuss in the comments. I hope that members of OSMF’s board of directors and members of the working group will also take part in this discussion. Anticipating questions, I published in my diary, because communication through other channels seems ineffective.
Discussion
Comment from ZeLonewolf on 18 May 2022 at 04:10
There are other map styles out there that are far more welcoming to contributors than osm-carto, and would be happy to add parcel lockers to their map.
Here’s a start: https://github.com/openmaptiles/openmaptiles/pull/1392
Comment from tomczk on 18 May 2022 at 08:22
@ZeLonewolf the thing about carto is that it is the default style on osm.org and it’s the first and in many cases the only style that people see. In my opinion this makes it a part of OSM core infrastructure. Because of that I believe maintainers should be responsible to the community and OSMF.
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 18 May 2022 at 12:58
For start: I am not going to claim that OSM Carto development works well or that it currently works at all.
But in general:
Can you list some software or cartography or sysadmin or config presets projects, used in OSM ecosystem, running as a democracy?
That is actually fairly normal. There are various projects, run (or not run) by various people with various rules.
People are free to use that work if they wan. People running this projects are not entitled that people will continue to use them.
Projects on open license can be forked if someone wants and is convinced that they can run project better or in a different way.
Running projects like this on pure democracy is unlikely to work well and I am not aware of successful examples.
Democracy is a good methods to run government, not a projects such as software projects. Or cartography or sysadmin or config presets projects.
Note: I am one of OSM Carto maintainers, almost inactive. Out of some reasons why I am inactive:
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️🌈 on 18 May 2022 at 13:05
The OSMF “supports, but does not control” the OSM project. This also means “we don’t tell people how to map”. I don’t think the OSMF should have the power to tell software projects like osm-carto, how to run themselves (unless they opt-in). If you would like to change this OSMF policy, I encourage you to join the OSMF. and either run for the OSMF Board, or start a membership resolution to change OSMF policy/actions.
One solution is be “better, not bitter”. 🙂 Make a new map style (fork one?). Suggest it as a new tile layer on osm.org. And so on. I’m a professional sysadmin at Geofabrik. Setting up a custom tile server is not impossible.
Rather than waiting for “someone else to do it”, you can do it yourself.
(I’m on the OSMF Board. This is my, not OSMF, opinions. The board hasn’t discussed this topic)
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 18 May 2022 at 13:09
To expand on my comment:
I am not claiming that OSM Carto development is run well or has no problems.
But “it is not a democracy” is not a problem in this case nor cause of the problems nor a symptom, at least in my opinion.
Comment from Eiim on 18 May 2022 at 13:58
I’d like to distinguish between autocracy, which I think is a fair definition of what we currently have in the Carto project, whether or not that is a bad thing, and anarchy, which is more Swedneck’s recent project.
Comment from Cristoffs on 18 May 2022 at 15:02
In this case, it is not about mapping. It is just about being able to augment the functionality and use the potential of the community that is already available in the OSM database.
At the same time, the main style of the map should not be managed autocratically, because it does not represent only the view of one person, but the work of the community.
It would be appropriate to create clear and transparent working standards and at least some form of plan, preferably long term. Especially since this version of OSM is the most visible and used.
Perhaps Geofabrik should work with the OpenStreetMap Poland Association to create a new style of map that better represents the potential of OSM and takes into account the changing needs of the world and the community.
Comment from عثمان ਉਸਮਾਨ bgo_eiu on 18 May 2022 at 16:30
iD is a good example of an open source project that is much more open to community contributions. Whether or not it technically qualifies as democracy is not that important, that is just what people expect of an open source project.
The current situation on the Carto issues board is a joke. This is an issue I opened this week: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4547
This is an example of something that is easily solvable (just enabling a font in the same Noto international font set that was excluded arbitrarily many years ago), uncontroversial (would make mapping in Pakistan easier for everybody, and represents standard practice in internalization for Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc), and completely in line with nominal Carto principles of showing text in the local language. What was annoying about the response here is as soon as I provided additional detail to explain why this was important, the maintainer (imagico) responded by continuing to talk very confidently about languages he clearly does not know much about. There is nothing wrong with not knowing about a topic, but doing a song and dance about how people should address concerns he made up on the spot is just absurd. This person was hung up on how they personally didn’t think the script was legible, which means nothing coming from someone who didn’t know it existed or what languages it is used for until a moment before. Providing a variety of references, explanations, and examples did not help.
I could fork it, sure, but this something that could get fixed within a day. If people think forking Carto is easier than contributing to it - that’s the impression I have so far - then it should be dropped sooner rather than later. Maybe “abandonware” would be as apt a description of the current state of the project as autocracy.
Comment from woodpeck on 18 May 2022 at 16:30
The map style already suffers from displaying too much, not too little. The reason why development has grind to a halt is that everyone - like you - has their pet thing they want - like parcel lockers - and giving everyone what they want will lead to map that causes only headache. Even today users look at the map and say: I don’t know what all this means. More “democracy” would only lead to more horse trading - you get an icon for your parcel locker if I get a little icon for my used-underwear-vending-machine. This is not the solution.
It is trivial to make an OSM-based map that shows some form of overlay. You can even do it without your own hosting, just based on Overpass queries, or you can host your own overlay layer for faster loading. That would be a simple step towards the “parcel locker” map that you want. Long term, maybe we can have something on osm.org where you can switch individual POIs off and on. Then we could come back to a cleaner cartography, and let people show POIs on top. But there are probably myriad other ideas. Overloading the standard map tiles with ever more icons that nobody understands (and that, by the way, do not appear in any sort of map key either) doesn’t help anyone.
Comment from Tordanik on 18 May 2022 at 16:36
I don’t think democracy is well suited for software development or map style design, and autocratic projects are quite common and successful in the open source world.
But: What makes this model work is credible competition. Forks allow the community to assert control when maintainers steer a project in the wrong direction. And in the case of osm-carto, the OSMF provides substantial support (technical resources and visibility) which is not available to a fork. This raises the bar for competing efforts.
Having read through the GitHub issue reinforces my impression that the goals of osm-carto and what we expect from the osm.org default style aren’t fully aligned. I consider it unfortunate that osm.org showcases an increasingly smaller fraction of the work mappers put into the OSM database. And I would appreciate a larger community of contributors to the default osm.org style, even at some risk of “mediocrity in design”.
How to move forward from here is an open question. While I agree with the principle outlined by Amanda – that the OSMF shouldn’t be too deeply involved –, I’m afraid that we’re already involved to a substantial degree by strongly favoring osm-carto over other projects. We need to figure out how to lower the bar for new map styles to make it onto osm.org.
Comment from syntex on 18 May 2022 at 16:40
@woodpeck Maybe because the legend of carto is out of date? And it does not contain symbols of shops and amenities? Even the colours of an industrial area and others are out of date.
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 18 May 2022 at 16:50
See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_tile_layers/Guidelines_for_new_tile_layers
Not entirely sure how hard is to meet
and is it cost of 50 euro/month or 15 000 euro/month for non-default layer.
Note
in https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Cristoffs/diary/399189#comment52489
Comment from Cristoffs on 18 May 2022 at 16:59
The problem is the resources and their price.
Additionally, given the existing styles on the home page, there seems to be no idea what layers and styles should be there. For me it is important because it is a business card of the project - the first place where many people start their adventure with OSM
Comment from عثمان ਉਸਮਾਨ bgo_eiu on 18 May 2022 at 17:01
I will also note that it is currently impossible to get an icon removed from Carto. I suggested that since indoor artworks in overground buildings are not rendered, artworks in underground buildings like subway stations and parking should also not be rendered. I was told the maintainer that he would rather see some kind of separate underground artwork be added.
Comment from Cristoffs on 18 May 2022 at 17:06
As I said, clear transparent rules for each style, a roadmap, and an idea of what we want to convey with each style, and as @syntex said an up-to-date description.
The main site will be a pride, not a museum. Why other sites based on OSM data can have a clear message and we can’t?
Comment from عثمان ਉਸਮਾਨ bgo_eiu on 18 May 2022 at 17:07
And yes, I have the time and resources to make a pull request to an open source project. I do not have the time and resources to set up, host, and advocate for a whole new one, though I would like to and think it’s worth a try for anyone who does. I think that’s likely true for most people.
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 18 May 2022 at 17:15
See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_tile_layers/Guidelines_for_new_tile_layers
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 18 May 2022 at 17:16
Basically, anyone who has map style and is willing to obtain/donate rendering can have their own map style and osm.org website.
Comment from SomeoneElse on 18 May 2022 at 18:46
Responding to a couple of Mateusz’ points:
That’s simply not true - it’s flatly contradicted by the “Global scope and coverage” section of https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_tile_layers/Guidelines_for_new_tile_layers posted above. As an example, I maintain a map style that is focused on features present in England and Wales, but is of less and less interest the further you go from there. It would make no sense to suggest that people in Iran use a map style that shows different sorts of “Enlgand and Wales public rights of way” and 300 different combinations of pub features. If I tried to suggest it as a global style on osm.org people would (rightly) object on the grounds that it is not interesting to most people around the world.
It used to be true that “anyone could have their own map style” - before the https enforcers had their way, it was trivial to swap an OSM tile layer for a different one using browser plugins (and the switch2osm guides did actually suggest that).
That is a good question - elsewhere today a starting price of €150 per month was suggested for a global server. That sounds plausible to me, but clearly it does put this sort of thing out of the reach of many or even most people. For comparison, a map server serving GB and IE only costs me about €20 per month.
There’s another reason why “another global map style” isn’t a good idea - global map styles are just boring, lowest-common-denominator affairs, the McDonalds or Burger Kings of the map world. OpenStreetMap should be “everyone’s local map”, and that should also mean “everyone’s local map style” too. The things that are “interesting” to show on a map in one place are irrelevent elsewhere; for example highway shields are important in the US but almost no-one else understands the problem.
There’s lots wrong with OSM Carto as a map style and as a project, but I think that the far bigger problem is the lack of flexibility of osm.org itself to be able to support other styles.
Comment from kucai on 19 May 2022 at 01:27
I just want trees to be rendered individually! Jillions upon jillions of them.
Comment from Richard on 19 May 2022 at 09:59
Awesome. Look forward to your patch @Adamant1 given that it’s so easy.
Comment from matheusgomesms on 19 May 2022 at 17:02
OSM Carto has so many issues (and the many comments here are evidence of that). We know that any OpenSource project is subject to this kind of problem, but what I really dislike in the community is that whenever you bring a problem, the first reaction is:
“you can fork and do your own”
This phrase is wrong in so many ways, such as:
So the devs always say “don’t complain, please contribute”. Then you open an issue (legitimate) and it is never solved. Then you complain because that single issue that could be solved relatively fast by someone competent (say, 3 hours), is open for 4 months without solution. The answer is:
“Why don’t you open a PR then?”
Then you, that is not a dev, spend like 2 weeks trying to learn a bunch of stuff, instead of mapping, finally open a PR, and then the PR is never merged anyway!
So we come back to “you can fork and do your own” again.
Look for landuse=education or highway=busway, proposals that were discussed heavily for YEARS through the community, and then finally got accepted, but never made to Carto because God only knows (PRs opened and all stuff, never merged). But yeah, those tags are pet-tags too, just like all stuff that is not of interest to the main dev…
So what’s the point to having the repository open anyway? It is time to OSMF run things more professionally, having them more controlled for core stuff, just like the main render on OSM. I don’t know, hire some people exclusive for that, get more money to fund that, whatever it takes. This could be “Wikipedia of maps” as always referred on media, but we are very far from Wikimedia Foundation, unfortunately.
Something is not right… (and yeah, I know, I should stop complaining and join the OSMF board and be a dev and fix all issues on OSM and… instead of mapping-which I’m reasonably good at).
Comment from tomczk on 19 May 2022 at 17:42
It seems like for many people “democracy == direct democracy”.
While direct democracy probably wouldn’t work very well in this case and it would end up being a design by committee, I believe a representative democracy could work quite well.
It is not undemocratic to elect a person to make all the decisions in some matter.
What differentiates democracy from autocracy is accountability. If people are unhappy with an elected representative they can dismiss them and elect different person. In case of autocracies people can’t easily make changes. In case of software projects this can mean a hard fork.
What we have in openstreetmap-carto is closer to autocracy because they are not responsible to neither OSMF nor community (despite being the default style).
There are no processes to voice protest and have it seriously considered. If you complain to maintainers … well they are the ones you are complaining about so guess how well that is going to work. If you complain to OSMF they will tell you that:
and that if you don’t like it you can fork and make your own project.
OpenStreetMap is not a software project, software is used to run in but it’s about data. The important thing (data) is made by the community and that makes community the most important part of OSM. If people get discouraged and go away there will be no one to update the data and project will stagnate and eventually die. That’s why community deserves to be listened to.
When someone complained about getting doxxed the maintainers and OSMF ignored it. Imagico claims that he can ignore accepted proposals since they have no authority) or that maintainers don’t consider adding features as important. There is no accountability.
This may work for small open source projects but OpenStreetMap is no longer a small project and being the default map style that everyone sees on the main page means they are not small either.
It’s not about getting my thing rendered, there are many complaints from many people about many things, just see posts above, see these threads on OSM World discord: example 1 example 2. It’s clear that there is a problem and we should focus on how to fix it not dismiss it.
Comment from tomczk on 19 May 2022 at 18:45
@matheusgomesms I completely agree. Telling people to just fork it or to do everything themselves is not just lazy but harmful to the project. More professionalism is needed.
Comment from woodpeck on 19 May 2022 at 21:34
I really think that - echoing SomeoneElse from further above - we must get rid of the expectation which surfaces in many posts here, that the “standard OSM style” needs to be everything to everyone. Because most of those doing the heavy lifting on the map styling side do so because they have an interest in cartography, and cartography is, among other things, the art of reducing things to make a good map.
Whereas everything they ever hear from mappers is the demand for new features to be shown - like in this thread.
It would be great if some day we could get to a point where the Polish community creates the Polish map tiles, and the US community creates the US map tiles, and on osm.org this all flows together into one seamless map. It’s complicated but not impossible. I, for one, do not believe in the panacea of “vector tiles” being bandied about by everyone and their dog - performant vector tiles will have to leave out tons of features. But hey, if someone wants to contribute to the effort of bringing vector tiles to OSM, that’s great and there’s places other than this discussion where they should focus their efforts, and work together with others to bring this to fruition. I’m just saying, if you are part of the vector tile team, prepare to be the target of exactly this kind of criticism one year down the line.
Adamant1, your contributions to OSM have never caused anything but strife, and you’re only here because like a truffle hog to truffles you are attracted to controversy, trying to somehow add oil to any flames you see in order to then lean back and watch the spectacle. I have seen this behaviour from you in OSM too many times, and I will certainly not entertain you. Your insincere statements are not calculated to help finding a solution to problems, but only to create maximum tension. This is not helpful. OSM would be far better off if you left the project altogether.
Comment from SomeoneElse on 19 May 2022 at 21:55
@matheusgomesms
I can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least one candidate standing for the board at the next elections with that as a platform. If you’re not an OSMF member already I’d definitely join so that you can influence the direction the foundation takes.
Why do you think that a “professional OSMF standard style” would accept all changes that have been “discussed heavily for years … and then finally got accepted”? Is it not possible that these professionals might say “actually, we have a perfectly good way of tagging that already, so we don’t want to support another way of tagging the same thing”?
To take a specific example, with a “person who looks after a map style” hat on I looked at the usage of highway=busway, and just treating it as an alias of highway=service made the most sense. I’m sure that that wasn’t what the proponents of the tag had in mind, but it does make most sense in the area I render.
There can’t be any one map style that does everything - it would be impossible to understand. I try to be extremely inclusive of what to render (sort https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/projects by keys and the style I look after is second only to MapComplete) but some of those are “really the same as [some other tag]” or “only rendered from zoom 21” - you can’t assume that any new addition (parcel lockers, busways, whatever) will be treated by renderers as a “new and different thing”, because it probably isn’t.
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 20 May 2022 at 07:42
it is not true
such comment is a passive-aggressive lazy swipe
this type of comments is a part of reason why I am minimally active on OSM Carto and other activity has replaced it ( https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Cristoffs/diary/399189#comment52488 )
If you insult people and post false claims that something is not done out of “pure complacency and laziness” is:
countereffective way of getting people to do things for you
insulting
associates other people with the same goal with insulting snide false claims
“if it’s so easy why don’t you do it then!” is 100% OK response to this.
Your claim was false, misleading, insulting and unhelpful that makes harder to process actual good faith feedback. It is neither productive nor effective nor OK to make such statement.
No idea how you reached such opinion, but please stop using this method and stop making such comments.
Even with completely 100% abandoned project (which Carto is not) people can fork it. Some did it.
You can also view how it works and reuse parts of it.
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 20 May 2022 at 08:01
Maybe I should reread this thread and look for actionable things. But at this moment I associate it with accusation of “pure complacency and laziness” by someone who has no idea what needs to be done to achieve this, has not contributed to this to vector tiles, is not planning to but will happily insult other people for not working on what they want.
And frankly, I will use “unsubscribe” button below rather than looking at other comments.
No idea whether it is deliberate trolling and actions to make discussion utterly unproductive, but it is the result.
I am definitely NOT running out of things to do. Even if I would live for 10 000 years I can be busy entire time without contributing to OSM Carto ever again.
And baseless insults are not effective way of encouraging people to do something they want, at least in my case.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️🌈 on 20 May 2022 at 08:11
“At this point there’s zero reason the style doesn’t render vector tiles except for pure complacency and laziness.” I mean, I would think “The software to run it can’t be installed any more” is a reason, but what would I know? 🙄🤣
“I don’t know … [just] get more money” lol. Let me get my magic wand…
I’ve ported osm carto to vector tiles. I’ve run lots of tile servers. Lots of people with lots of opinions here. Typing into the comment box is so easy…
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 20 May 2022 at 08:12
(responding to comments which already generated notifications in my email and are worth clarifying)
note https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4527#issuecomment-1130371816 with my response which I posted within minutes of being aware of the problem
note https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md#reporting-issues - “If you encounter a conduct-related issue, you should report it to the maintainers by sending them all an email.” (it has a link) is there because people are not monitoring every single activity on issue tracker
AFAIK no such email reached me
Yes, passing a proposal does not obligate OSM Carto to render it.
OSM Carto (or any other data consumer) are free to not render carpet hangers or packstations even if this features have approved proposals such as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/carpet_hanger or other from https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Proposals_with_%22Approved%22_status
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 20 May 2022 at 08:20
Sorry for all people who raise a valid complaints, and sorry for partially focusing on the worst insult, if I would be a greater human then I would be able to ignore bad parts and use better part to improve situation.
But frankly, my response will be like described in https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Cristoffs/diary/399189#comment52524 and I will simply run away from this topic for next several months. At least.
Seriously, “lets insult people so they will work for free on what I want to have” is not effective, as far as I know.
Comment from amapanda ᚛ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ᚜ 🏳️🌈 on 20 May 2022 at 08:29
“When someone complained about getting doxxed … OSMF ignored it”🔗 Likewise, a comment on a github issue w/o a response you like doesn’t mean “the OSMF [membership? board? working group? committee?] ignored it” something.
Comment from Mateusz Konieczny on 20 May 2022 at 08:45
And to clarify, baselessly insulting your employees is also intolerable, ineffective and unethical. In general, baseless insult are not a good idea, except rare cases like parody or comedy.
But trying to insult others as primary method of getting them to work for you is even weirder.
Comment from tomczk on 20 May 2022 at 12:41
The context was not that accepted proposal entitles feature to be rendered.
He said that he can completely ignore new tagging because people voting for it doesn’t make it law (anybody can do anything they want when tagging) so considering tags that have been approved is worthless and only feature count is important even if community agreed to change the way a feature is tagged.
Comment from Wynndale on 21 May 2022 at 07:33
Perhaps it would be better for OSM to actively support the development of alternative general purpose map styles (an alternative being the iD option of changing the maintainer to someone more cooperative).
Comment from mmd on 21 May 2022 at 07:58
Nobody posted this yet, so here we go: http://blog.imagico.de/openstreetmap-carto-an-update-on-the-project/
Comment from Cristoffs on 21 May 2022 at 11:04
Three days after my original post, another wall of text. As for me, it confirms my concerns about the state of democracy and the desire to make changes in the authoritarian way the main style of map is governed….
Comment from mmd on 21 May 2022 at 13:03
One thing I found particularly troubling was the project’s inability to acquire and retain talent in the area of cartographic design, as well as the state of the underlying rendering technology [mapnik].
Quoting from the blog post:
And yes, I do realize this is a very different discussion than the one in this OSM diary.