Nikolay Petrov: “OpenStreetMap is a project where it is not necessary to communicate with people”

Nikolay Petrov is a developer of sites and mobile applications from Pskov. In addition, he draws a map in OSM and supports the OpenRecycleMap project dedicated to separate collection of garbage. How schoolchildren relate to OSM, why the future is open source, and why it is not worth mapping by satellite, Nikolay said all this in an interview.

- How, when and under what circumstances did you meet the OpenStreetMap project?

- For many years I have been developing and supporting the site bestmaps.ru - it is an aggregator that compiles various cartographic substrates, where they can be compared with each other. Probably around 2008 I added another card there - OpenStreetMap. I looked through it periodically, but I became a full-fledged participant in the project only 6 years later - in 2014 I made my first revision and joined the RU-OSM community.

- What prompted you to do this?

- Two points: the desire to make a card better and banal curiosity. One fine day, I saw that the area around my country house was not drawn. I decided to fix it. By the way, I noticed that for many, the first revision is the dacha / village or courtyard where they live. Although this is quite natural, since what other place do you know better than others? Only where you live for many years or often go.

Also at that time, OSM, as a project, was terra incognita for me, and therefore it was interesting to study: how it works, what happens inside and what it is like to draw a map. As a result, all this dragged on so much that I continue to map until now. Perhaps this is also due to the fact that I actively use maps as a tourist, and always prepare for my future trips, and after them I make edits: roads, paths, streams, springs - in general, all strategically important objects that will be useful to other tourists.

- How does this happen?

- Before you go camping, I carefully study the area on all the maps available to me. After, taking into account all the features of the territory, I build a route. During the trip I try to pay attention to those places where the map diverges from reality. Now I try to edit the satellite as little as possible, when it comes to nature - in such places it is better to see everything with your own eyes: a clearing, road or stream. Otherwise, it may turn out that he painted one, but in fact - quite another. And you yourself will be lost and you will fail people.

- Was it difficult to “join” the project: understand its rules, become a member of the community?

- I did not have any difficulties. Previously, I was already an active member of another community: the Drupal open source site management community. It is incredibly similar to the OSM community: the same principles, approaches, and communication style. Therefore, it was all familiar to me. And the important thing is that I, like many programmers, is an introvert, that is, I first search for the answer to my question in Google, and if I don’t find anything, I ask the community. At the same time, the OSM community is quite friendly and responsive. But in most cases, I manage to find the answers myself. In addition, OSM is a project where it is not necessary to communicate with people. You can edit the map for years and not go to the forum, the main thing is to comply with the rules and adhere to what is written in WikiOSM .


Logo Pskov OSM lovers

- What was the Russian OSM community in 2014?

- It’s hard for me to say for the whole community, since I have never been particularly integrated into it. But we had a certain “movement” in Pskov - my hometown. I then created a VKontakte community of OSM Pskov lovers (https://vk.com/osm_pskov). We held several face-to-face meetings ( 1 , 2 ). Moreover, these meetings were fruitful. Thanks to them, we met each other and made some interesting projects. The most noticeable of them, probably, are open lessons in schools on OSM. There were two in total, but it was an unforgettable experience. One lesson was conducted by Alexander Matrunich , the other - now famous Ilya Zverevwho is from Pskov, and I can tell them, I assisted in the teaching process and helped in preparing for the lessons.


The first meeting of the Pskov osmeri


Pokatushka in the forests of the Pskov region

- How did the lessons go? How did the students react?

- In Pskov, there is a wonderful caring teacher - Vladimir Kolpakov , who is constantly trying to come up with something new and interesting for children in order to involve them in the learning process. He makes various interactive educational programs. Now he teaches robotics and astronomy. It was he who helped us find a school for our OSM lessons.


From left to right: Ilya Zverev and Nikolai Petrov before the OSM lesson

If we talk about the lessons themselves, then this was an experiment. It is unlikely that of those guys who attended the lecture, as a result, someone became a cartographer. We wanted them to draw something in OSM themselves and see how the map changes right there. If we talk about a certain outcome of this experiment with lessons, then personally I had no expectations. There was only a desire to see what would happen if teenagers 13-14 years old show OSM. Regarding the expectations of Ilya Zverev and Alexander Matrunich, I can’t say anything. Firstly, I don’t remember their exact reaction and words, and secondly, it’s better to ask them about it.


Alexander Matrunich tells students about OSM

- you are the author of the OpenRecycleMap project . Tell us about him.

- The idea of ​​the project arose quite spontaneously. At some point, I realized that there is no convenient tool for depositing and viewing waste recycling containers, including from a mobile device, and indicate which fractions can be put into it. Therefore, I wanted to make a simple POI editor that would cover this need. But to make this project interesting to a wider circle of people, I decided to pay more attention to the display of these very containers. You can choose any one fraction, for example, batteries, and see where in your city they can be handed over. Of course, the data is not yet complete, as it is taken from OSM. But in my native Pskov, I noted almost all of these points. The project is not tied to Russia - it is international and has already been translated into five languages ​​of the world.

At the moment, the site has almost no visitors, literally a few people a day. OpenRecycleMap is an incomplete project, its development is ongoing, it is quite possible another version of the interface will be released in the near future, and therefore I do not make any efforts to advertise it. I also plan to make a catalog of containers for each large city so that they can be seen not only on the map, but also in a list. We can say that what is now is a beta version. If someone has suggestions and ideas on the site, I will be glad - write to telegram chat .

- How difficult was it to work with the OSM infrastructure and its data?

- Firstly, I did not work on the project alone. Its core was written by my fellow crazylost programmer ., which has long been familiar with OSM: its tags, API, and gut. Therefore, we had no difficulties in taking data from OSM, displaying them on a map, and also adding new ones via API. Secondly, OSM is not such a complex project that it is not understood: the architecture is clear, there is documentation for it, in addition, there are enough open libraries and tools. In general, take and do what you want. Of the difficulties, I can note the following:

1) OSM has about 70 tags related to waste recycling. I had to spend a lot of time to select from this list the most significant and suitable.

2) It was not easy to choose simple and understandable tag names for everyone, because in the case of an inaccurate description, we would already get errors - people would add dots with tags, putting a completely different meaning in them. The situation was complicated by the fact that there were several options for translating the same tag. For example, there is a recycling tag: low_energy_bulbs. They are advised to mark the places where they take "Energy-saving lamps." But the question is not revealed: what kind of lamps? Most likely, this tag was invented when LED lamps were not yet widespread, and compact fluorescent lamps, on the contrary, were common. A list of tags (fractions) and translations is available here .

- Are you ready to post the source code of your project under an open license?

- Yes. It is already laid out onGitHub . We just did not decide about which license to choose. But if we talk about a fundamental decision, then it has already been made, and if someone wants to use our experience for their own purposes - welcome. Moreover, one person from Germany has already done this. I do not see this as a problem. This is how open source lives and works .

- Was it difficult for you to make this decision? In fact, take and give your work to the world?

- No. If you do not share the principles of open source, it is probably hard to understand, but open source is much more profitable than closed. Because then you save resources, especially if you are a small company. We can say that open source is an economical way to write code, because when you open the code you attract other programmers to your side. Due to this, reliability and stability are achieved. Of course, there are situations when it is impossible to open the source code, but for many applications that simplify the life of a simple user, this is a working model.

And I’m sure that this is precisely the future for such software. Practice shows that over time, more and more opensource programs become available. Moreover, now there are more and more commercial services that are not afraid to open the source code of their product. If we talk about the world of OSM, then this, for example, the mobile navigator Maps.Me. It is very commercial, there is a lot of advertising, they are clearly aimed at profit, but the source code is open.

- What would you say to those developers who are in doubt: should they work with OSM or not?

- Usually, as a programmer and an advocate of open source code, when I need to solve a problem, I first look for open source. If this does not bring results or something old and long unsupported comes across, then in this case I look towards proprietary solutions. For some reason, it seems to me that many programmers do this. And if you adhere to this logic, but talk about geodata and maps, then OSM is the only open map and database in the world. At least I do not know analogues. Therefore, you must definitely try it.

Of course, it is imperfect: it does not have full addressing, POIs are not always relevant, uneven coverage, but it is free and exists. All other services are for money. If you have them, then you can look in the direction of other solutions. But the basic idea, it seems to me, should be like this - first we try to use free and open projects, and only then proprietary and paid.

Moreover, no matter how strange it may sound, commercial closed projects are not always reliable. Why? Because their developers at any time can stop supporting their product or change the conditions and you will be left with nothing. With OSM, this simply cannot happen. In which case, you download the planet dump and raise your tile serveror deploy services using the OSM base on the server (for example, search, geocoding, all kinds of uploads, etc.). From a long-term perspective, this is a more reliable and controllable option.

- Do you use OSM data in work or personal life?

- In personal life - for orientation in space, when I go on another trip or go with my family to the forest for blueberries. At work - we use constantly on our three projects. And not just as a substrate, but the data of the base itself: the coordinates of houses, city boundaries, tags of objects and streets.


OSM Orientation

- Maybe you have a history of OSM?

- There is one - instructive. Once with friends I went to the quarry - this is such an interesting place in the Pskov region. Naturally, we went on a map based on OSM. I found the shortest route. I thought we’ll come faster - we’ll stay there more, take a walk, take a rest. We went along the road, which was supposed to save a lot of time, and it led me to a dead end. In reality, the relief was not at all the same as on the map. I was very upset, worried, thought everything: “How so? Who could draw such a road that leads nowhere? Why did he do this? ” I arrived home, opened a map, and it turned out that this road in OSM was drawn by none other than myself. And I did it by satellite. This road can still be seen on the satellite, as it lags behind reality by several years. Here is such a lesson.

Conclusion: not all satellite drawing is equally useful, especially outside the city. Still, in such places, before you draw a map, you should visit yourself: walk, see everything with your own eyes, make notes and be sure to record a GPS track.



- How do you map? Share secrets?

- When I go to nature by car, I always try to record a GPS track. Recently, I’ve been doing this through the OSMAnd mobile application, previously I used OruxMaps for these purposes. If there is such an opportunity, I drive along those roads that are not in OSM, so that later I can draw them on my own track, since most of the forest roads cannot be seen from the satellite - they are hidden by foliage. Moreover, often such roads are of good quality and a passenger car can easily pass along them. In this case, recording a track is the only way to map a similar road.

I edit the map in JOSM, but now I do it much less often - once. When the time is right for this, I draw new buildings in Pskov, add containers for separate waste collection and draw forest roads along my GPS tracks.


Gadgets for collecting data in the forest (tracker, tablet, walkie-talkie)

- Why do you map in OSM?

- Each person has an important need - to help others. For some, it is more pronounced, for someone less. Participating in OSM, this is exactly what we are doing: we draw a map, which anyone can then freely use. This is a form of helping others and spending leisure time to good use.



- What do you say at the end of our conversation?

- I will return to the conversation about open source, which is OpenStreetMap. I believe that it is precisely this philosophical concept that has the future, since from the point of view of technological development we have no other choice - sooner or later people will have to cooperate and share their accumulated knowledge and experience with each other in order to step towards new achievements.

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Communication of Russian OpenStreetMap participants is in the Telegram chat room and on the forum .
There are also groups on social networks VKontakte , Facebook , but they mainly publish news.

→ Join OSM!

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