Category Archives: Corporate Members

Welcome TomTom, our first Platinum Corporate Member

We are happy to announce that TomTom is joining us as our first platinum tier corporate member. Their contribution provides crucial direct financial support to our operations and infrastructure, which is essential to accompany the growth and ensure the long-term sustainability of the world’s largest crowdsourced geospatial project.

People create data in OpenStreetMap, excited that open map data will be widely useful and used. Many more people will be interacting with OpenStreetMap data through TomTom’s user base, and some of them will be curious about our community and interested to help make it better. We welcome all such contributions, whether someone is fixing a small issue on the map affecting them, or as the first step of a life long mapping passion.

We are grateful for the wide extent of TomTom’s support of OpenStreetMap, which extends beyond financial contributions: they actively participate in working groups, the Advisory Board, and local OpenStreetMap communities. TomTom’s recognition of the importance of the OpenStreetMap data they use is a testament to the value our project provides. We hope this inspires other corporate partners to join as members to support OpenStreetMap.

Read more from TomTom on their announcement.

OSMF and OpenCage – Joint press release

Note: OpenCage is a silver level corporate member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, entitling them to this joint press release. If your organisation would like to support the OSMF more, please consider joining the OSMF as a corporate member, or read about other ways to give back.

OpenStreetMap Foundation corporate member OpenCage is pleased to announce a new collaboration with popular geospatial podcast MapScaping to help encourage the growth of small OpenStreetMap-based projects.

OpenCage has purchased four episodes worth of MapScaping advertising slots, and will donate these slots to small OpenStreetMap projects. Each selected project will receive a 30 second ad read, a presence on the MapScaping website, and promotion via social media. The definition of “OpenStreetMap projects” is intentionally left vague to encourage a wide spectrum of applications. Examples of the types of projects OpenCage and MapScaping could imagine supporting with the initiative include: open source tools seeking developers, OSMF volunteers recruiting volunteers, start-ups looking to make their service more widely known, or local OSM communities advertising new initiatives.

Full details of the initiative and application process are laid out in a post on the OpenCage blog. Applications are open until the 15th of October. Preference will be given to projects that, due to their newness or non-commercial nature, don’t have the resources to advertise themselves.

“Our service has depended on OpenStreetMap since the day we first started eight years ago. While we’ve always done our best to give back to the OSM community – for example by sponsoring events, and becoming corporate members of the foundation – we specifically wanted to find a way to help smaller, up and coming projects. Working with MapScaping gives us a great tool to help these projects accelerate,” said Ed Freyfogle, OpenCage co-founder.

Daniel O’Donohue, founder and host of MapScaping said, “We’re delighted to provide a platform to help the OpenStreetMap community grow by sharing these projects with our global audience. OpenStreetMap has been a key ingredient in the explosion of geospatial innovation over the last decade, and I’m looking forward to working with creative projects that are at the leading edge of that innovation.”

About OpenCage

OpenCage operates a highly-available, enterprise level geocoding API based on OpenStreetMap and other open datasources. In addition to being corporate members of the OSMF, OpenCage are proud members of the UK and German local chapters, co-sponsor and contribute to the open source development of Nominatim (the primary OpenStreetMap geocoding software), and regularly sponsor OpenStreetMap events. 

About MapScaping

The MapScaping Podcast is a weekly podcast for the geospatial community. Started in 2019, MapScaping has grown rapidly to become a leading independent media voice in the global geospatial discussion. The show profiles innovative geo projects and technologies, and provides a forum to discuss issues facing the geospatial community. 

What is OpenStreetMap?

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is a international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide. Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc. OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

What is the OpenStreetMap Foundation?

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. The OSMF supports the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation – you can become a member for free, if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

OSMF and OpenCage – Joint press release

OpenCage is a silver level corporate member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, entitling them to this joint press release. If your organisation would like to support the OSMF more, please consider joining the OSMF as a corporate member, or read about other ways to give back.

Geocoding is the process of converting between addresses or placenames and geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude). Geocoding is a core geospatial functionality; an underlying building block that is critical to developing location based services.

OpenStreetMap Foundation corporate member OpenCage operates a highly-available, enterprise level geocoding API based on OpenStreetMap. We’re pleased to announce that OpenCage recently increased their commitment to the OpenStreetMap Foundation by upgrading to silver level corporate membership.

“For years our service has built on OpenStreetMap. We’re delighted to increase our ongoing support of the worldwide OSM community by increasing our level of commitment to the OpenStreetMap Foundation.” said Ed Freyfogle, OpenCage co-founder.

“It’s a nice milestone that the business has grown to the point that we could upgrade from Bronze to Silver. But beyond financial support the main work we do is opening the eyes of our customers – most of whom arrive knowing simply that they need geocoding, and without a detailed understanding of open data – to open data’s many benefits. Our customers around the world are proof that OpenStreetMap is commercially usable not in some distant theoretical future, but today” continued Freyfogle.

An example of that type of educational work is OpenCage’s recently published Reverse Geocoding Guide, which details the technical challenges of ongoing operation of a reverse geocoding service, while also documenting the advantages of using open data as the underlying data foundation for such a service.

OpenCage offers open source SDKs for accessing their geocoding API for over 30 different programming languages.

In addition to being corporate members of the OSMF, OpenCage are proud members of the UK (the business was started in the UK) and German (the business is currently based in Germany) local chapters, co-sponsor and contribute to the open source development of Nominatim (the primary OpenStreetMap geocoding software), and regularly sponsor OpenStreetMap events.

GEOMOB logo

OpenCage also encourages geoinnovation by running Geomob, a regular series of in-person and online events with the goal of promoting geoinnovation in any and all forms – whether for “fun or profit”, as the event tagline says. Now in its thirteenth year, Geomob has become an established feature of the European geo event landscape, and regularly features projects using OpenStreetMap.

Early in 2020 the Geomob podcast was launched. The weekly conversations provide a chance to reflect on geo industry trends, discuss interesting new geo technology, and interview Geomob speakers. Podcast guests have included many members of the OpenStreetMap community, including Allan Mustard (chairperson of the OSMF Board), Tyler Radford (executive director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team), Sarah Hoffmann (maintainer of the geocoding tool Nominatim, which powers search on osm.org), several founders of businesses building on top of OpenStreetMap, and many more.

What is OpenStreetMap?

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is a international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide. Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc. OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

What is the OpenStreetMapFoundation?

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. The OSMF supports the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation.