OpenStreetMap, business interests and capitalism

Another interesting recent topic of discussion in the OSM community has been on corporate influence on the project. The concern about corporate influence on OpenStreetMap is fairly old. For some time there had been substantial concern about a direct takeover of the OpenStreetMap Foundation by large US tech corporations. I had commented on this in the past. But i realize that the focus of that discussion had been somewhat one sided, looking mostly at the influence of individual business interests. I would like to illustrate that with two quotes from the current discussion. adreamy writes: I don’t believe OSM’s identity has ever been about being anti-business or anti-capitalist. Rather, I believed it was about remaining independent of any single commercial interest, and about building a project where individuals could participate on equal footing in a genuinely open community. Simon Poole writes: It used to be that a majority of board members worked in companies in the geo data…