JOURNAL ARTICLE

Open Geospatial Data within Digital Capitalism: OpenStreetMap and the Overture Maps Foundation.

  • Published In: Cartographica, 2025, v. 60, n. 3. P. 160 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Schröder-Bergen, Susanne; Michel, Boris; Glasze, Georg; Dammann, Finn 3 of 3

Abstract

This article examines the evolving role of open geospatial data within digital capitalism, focusing on the community-based geodatabase OpenStreetMap (OSM) and the emergence of the Overture Maps Foundation. It highlights how large digital platform companies, notably Meta (formerly Facebook), have increasingly engaged with OSM by using its data, contributing to its development, and influencing its governance, which has generated tensions between commercial interests and the digital commons ethos of OSM. The establishment of the Overture Maps Foundation in 2022 by Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and TomTom is analyzed as a strategic response to these tensions, aiming to create a standardized, commercially viable open geospatial data infrastructure under the Linux Foundation. The article underscores the complex interplay between digital commons and capitalist market forces in the production and control of geospatial data, emphasizing the need for further research on how these dynamics will shape the future of open geospatial data.

Additional Information

  • Source:Cartographica. 2025/09, Vol. 60, Issue 3, p160
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Geography and Cartography
  • Publication Date:2025
  • ISSN:0317-7173
  • DOI:10.3138/cart-2024-0030
  • Accession Number:188764274
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