Item — HN Reader

Lyft is one of the biggest contributors to OSM. Here is a list of OSM accounts related to Lyft [0]. In many places where I've edited OSM, Lyft employees have contributed quality data where there wasn't any before.

How (and, how respectfully) companies should contribute to OSM is an ongoing debate. But corporate influences are often a good thing, and I think nearly anyone would agree that Lyft's contributions to OSM have been resoundingly helpful.

[0] https://github.com/OSM-DCT-Lyft/US/wiki/OSM-Team-Members

1 comments

Isn't this the driverless car team, vs. the ride-mapping team?

Regardless, it's good to see that they are contributing back to OSM. I agree that overall the use of OSM by anyone "lifts all ships" as long as users continue to contribute back. OSM is one of the most positive projects around lately in terms of taking something that used to be extremely expensive and highly restricted and democratizing it.

That may be true. But as a whole, it is worth noting that Lyft hires a significant number of people to edit OSM. Here is an interesting 2021 post by Jennings Anderson discussing paid edits on OSM, and how companies compare in their contributions:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jennings%20Anderson/diary...

I agree about how successful OSM has been recently. In an age where Wikipedia for example seems relatively mature, it's fun to see OSM grow at such a pace.

Jennings Anderson is a lead on Digital Twins standardization now

I used to work for Lyft and I can confirm that both teams (driverless and ride-share) contribute. Ride-share scaled later which may give you that false impression.

And Yes, it's a big investment for Lyft for the open source community.