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Dorofei Proleskovsky: “The only mapping project in which it makes sense to invest your time and energy is OSM”


Dorofei Proleskovsky is a Belarusian osmer and programmer who managed to work in many geostartaps related to OSM. He is currently developing analytical tools for crisis mapping at Kontur.io. Why OSM is in a technological stupor, how things are with him in Belarus and what the OSM Foundation is doing - he told all this in an interview.

- How and when did you meet OpenStreetMap?

- In the spring of 2008 . I then installed Linux on my computer and looked for a map of my native Minsk, which would work in it. At that time there was already a good map of this city - CityInfo , but, unfortunately, it ran exclusively on Windows, as its developer made it so that it did not work through Wine. Therefore, I needed something else. So I learned about Wikimapia, maps from Yandex and Google, and many other similar services. And somehow it quickly became clear that the only mapping project in which it makes sense to invest your time and energy is OpenStreetMap. True, at that time Minsk in it represented literally several major roads and a point with the word "Minsk".

First I painted houses around my yard, then everything that was on the way to the lyceum. In parallel, I began to study software related to OSM. I then had a Nokia N800 gadget on Maemo , by today's standards - a tablet. I launched the PyRoute application , which knows how to build routes, and began to lay them everywhere, since I regularly traveled around the city on a bicycle. If somewhere it was not paved, then I drew up the road, so I got involved in the mapping process. We can say that this is such a way to explore the world.

- What interested you in the project? Still, drawing a map is not the usual thing.

- Even then and now I was not very interested in the mapping process itself. In general, I am interested in the GIS topic, which in essence is engaged in the construction of digital models of the surrounding world and its study using these same models. OSM is the largest and most affordable model of the world, on which you can test a sufficient number of hypotheses and get answers to questions of interest. For example, “What will happen if this road is blocked?”, “How do we get from point A to point B?”, “Where is the store nearby?” And so on.

Mapping in this case for me is a way to make the answer to the question I posed the most accurate. Usually what happens? You are trying to analyze something and you understand that the data is clearly not enough or there are some errors in them. Then you go and either collect additional data, or correct errors in them. And again you try to do something with them.


Signature experiments on the map (June 2015)

- Do you continue to map? Or are you only doing data analysis now?

- When there is time and desire, I note everything that comes across to me along the way. I do it the same way as everyone else - through well-known mobile applications, and if from a computer, then through the JOSM editor. But this is not the bulk of my edits. Drawing an OSM card with your hands is fun if you've never worked with large amounts of data. If you have such an experience, then you begin to look at the map in a completely different way and come up with tools, sometimes they are also called validators, with the help of which you can find and fix one single repeating error or several at once.

For example, when I worked in a startup that provided taxi services in New York, we analyzed the GPS tracks coming to us and correlated them with what is on the map. It often happens that on a map in some place there is a ban on turning, and judging by the tracks, in reality this is not so, drivers there make a turn. So, we can conclude: the map requires clarification. So we made such a tool that was able to analyze such moments and helped us make OSM more accurate and better.


At ScanEx office, Cosmosnimki.Ru project, Moscow (01/21/2011)

- You joined the OSM community 12 years ago. What was it like then? What was going on in it?

- If the global OSM community was just starting to take shape, then the Belarusian community was still at an earlier stage of development. His appearance was promoted by the death of the Russa project. Then many free cartographers, who single-handedly drew maps for Garmin navigators, switched to OSM and brought their own experiences with them. If they passed according to OSM requirements (were drawn from open sources), then they were imported. In approximately the same way, almost all of Belarus was then rendered in OSM. Over the years, of course, almost nothing remained of these imports - everything was redrawn and updated several times.

The backbone of the Belarusian OSM community was, and still, I think, programmers are. Therefore, everything was always good and incredibly interesting here. There was no contention, meaningless throwing, and participants with an inflamed ego who were not ready for dialogue, but were doing something in the project just to show themselves. By the way, I don’t remember that we had a party mapping , as is common in Russia, but we often met in person - in a cafe or restaurant - and discussed the pressing problems of the community.

All our conversations were most often constructive and businesslike. We even agreed on tagging schemes at such meetings. And we didn’t have one that says so, the other - this way, but in the end - everyone quarreled and everyone draws, as he thinks right. We were always a little surprised to watch what was happening on the Russian side of the forum, where skirmishes often broke out and it didn’t end with anything good. At us everything was always quieter and friendlier. For me personally, meeting people is the most expensive thing in OSM.


At the HOT Summit 2019 conference (09/10/2019) Heidelberg, Germany

- As far as I know, one of your last major developments related to OSM is the Disaster Ninja service . Tell us about him.

- This is an analytical tool, which was created, first of all, for the needs of crisis, humanitarian mapping. It helps to quickly understand, and, therefore, make a decision regarding the territory in which the natural disaster occurred.

To make it clearer, I will try to tell as specifically as possible. How does this happen in life? Let's say a disaster happened in some state: an earthquake, a flood, or all at once. If this is a country of the first world, then most often it will eliminate the consequences of emergencies quickly and independently. They have cards, and rescuers, and everything else. But if these are developing countries, they often need outside help, and therefore representatives of international humanitarian missions come there. And, as you know, troubles do not come on schedule - they happen suddenly. And then a disaster happened, rescuers, doctors, volunteers and others urgently fly there on a plane. And while they are flying - in these couple of hours, and this is the most valuable time, you need to make at least an approximate map of the disaster area for them. Before who will draw it,many questions arise: “how to do it?”, “do I need to do it?”, “how much to draw?”, “throw a cry and call the whole world, or do you have your own strong local community?” and many, many others. So, to answer these questions and make the right decision, the collection and analysis of data for which previously took up to eight hours, that is, a whole working day. In emergency situations this is unforgivable a lot.

Our tool allows you to understand in 15 minutes how things are going with a particular territory in OSM. And we took the list of information that needs to be collected and shown from the HOT response protocol . It clearly describes what needs to be checked and what needs to be paid attention to.


PostGIS Day in Minsk (11/14/2019)

- Is it difficult for you to work with OSM data? Many people think that they are very raw.

- Due to the fact that I have been in OSM for a long time, and a number of things in it were invented by me personally or with my direct participation, I have no difficulties in working with its data. Moreover, recently I am also a PostGIS developer - this is an extension of the PostgreSQL database that allows you to work with spatial data. Therefore, all I need is to safely get it from OSM.

Difficulties arise in those who say so, from school or student time used to think that in life everything is exactly the same as in the physics problem book. There is a problem, it has one, at most two solutions, and it will certainly be solved correctly and in no more than an hour. Sometimes this forms an unhealthy expectation that everything happens in the real world, that you can take some data, literally prepare them for your task in an hour or two, and write a script according to the template, as written in the documentation. So, I’ve never seen anything like it in the world. But I saw a lot of people dissatisfied with this fact. Like, we tried to do something and we didn’t succeed, since the data from OSM is not machine readable or any other.

And no need to think that OSM data is a panacea. If something is missing in them, then this is not a data problem, but one who does not care about where else to get information. If you were hoping to take only data from OSM and perform some kind of analytics on it, but something went wrong and you cannot figure out where else to get the data, and therefore scold OSM, then I am very sorry. This is not OSM to blame.

And it also seems to me that people began to forget how much the card costs, because now they are everywhere and almost free. Therefore, it seems that all this is not so difficult and expensive. Although everything is exactly the opposite - a good card costs millions of dollars. This is the work of so many people. And if someone is dissatisfied with OSM, he can always hire cartographers and make the most accurate map that he will be pleased with. Those who know how much and what it costs - they value, love and actively use OSM in their work. And by the way, they do it all.

And the last important thought I have in the end: have you ever thought that only thanks to OSM did you - ordinary users, not representatives of megacorporations - have the opportunity to work with geodata and do GIS on your home computers? If not for OSM, you would never have been able to afford even the cheapest professional data set. Therefore, let us rejoice that we have free geodata, even in the form in which they are available on OSM.


Report on PostGIS at the FOSS4G 2019 Buchares Conference

- You have been in the project for quite some time. What do you like about him? What do not like? What would you do better?

- From the side of the cartographer and the data user, the project looks alive: every day more than 5 thousand people edit the map, make it more accurate and better, and you can always download data or get some number of tiles for free. But if you look into his technological gut, then there is stagnation. Its development stopped at the level of 2013.

Why did this happen? My version is as follows. Previously, the technical development of the project involved its participants. Many OSM components familiar to us are the work of enthusiasts, for example, the Mapnik tile generator was written by Artem Pavlenko, the Nominatim geocoder was Sarah Hoffman , the route construction was by Denis Luxand so on. Until a certain moment, OSM was a forge of new technologies and services. It was in its depths that they were born, and then became successful and world famous.

However, everything changed when large companies showed interest in OSM. Moreover, this story is interesting in that the trouble came from where it was not expected. At that time, everyone in the OSM community was actively afraid of Google and for some reason were sure that he was about to come to sue and take away the project. But there appeared Mapbox , which just took on the work of all those who had previously technologically developed OSM on bare enthusiasm. These people are now happy, but they have no time, and therefore no one is pulling the project forward.

And I do not want to say that Mapbox is to blame for something. This is a business and it behaves correctly - it hires the best of the best. What surprises me is different: how the OSM community and the OSM Fund reacted to this challenge , and what position they took. If you propose something to change in the OSM infrastructure, improve, fix, add, then most likely you will be told the following: “Leave! We are not a charitable organization and will not do anything. Everything you need is in Mapbox. ” But if in response you say that you know how to fix the error and are ready to code it yourself, then you will not be allowed to do it.

It seems to me that such a strange position has led to the fact that now all the best is in Mapbox, and the worst is in OSM. Because OSM has grown a super-competitor. We sent everyone to buy tiles in Mapbox, instead of growing our own services or telling the community: “Let's make our tiles better, faster, stronger and higher!” None of this happened.

And, I think, if it were not for the situation with coronavirus, when many began to use OSM as a substrate for their services that show its distribution around the world, because of this there were problems with tiles, then no one would fix the server. This time, the OSM Foundation simply did not dare to ban these projects and tell them in public: “Go to Mapbox! We are not drawing a map for you here! ” This would be surprising not only within the community, but also from outside observers. Therefore, they decided to ask for help and look for new servers.

But then again, what did OSM system administrators do? They simply deployed another copy of the software, which long ago required optimization and updating. We are following a quantitative path, not a qualitative one. My personal opinion is that if we pay attention to the OSM "stuffing" software, then the current servers will cope with the load due to refactoring.


Group photo of the participants of the conference “State of the Map US 2013”, San Francisco, USA

- Why, then, the OSM Foundation will not pay attention to this problem?

- Firstly, there are still too few people on the OSM Foundation Council who are able and willing to take responsibility for such bold transformations. They are there, for example, Alan Mustard , who has been great at moving everyone lately, but one in the field is not a warrior.

Secondly, OSM has already become such a technically complex project that one enthusiast in the evening will not be able to optimize it. Need a team of specialists on a full-time salary. Here, either the Fund itself should be hired by developers, or it should enable commercial companies to help OSM.

But while they do not want to do either one or the other. Maintain the status quo. And I don’t know how much longer this "car" will travel. Of course, it is periodically repaired, but one day we will realize that the project is irreversibly outdated. If we do not continue to change anything.


State of the Map Europe Conference in Vienna (07/16/2011), with Steve Coast (left)

- Where did the “Leave!” Position come from? Why not "Hello!" and "Let's be friends!"?

- This position was formed for a number of reasons. One of them is the article “Cat's flock” by Steve Costa , the founder and for some time the ideological leader of OSM. In it, he directly says that all "well-wishers" and "assistants" should be sent immediately and away. There is nothing for them to hang around in our project. I admit that for some time I also believed that such a model of behavior is correct, because it was blessed by the founder of OSM.

The second point that reinforced this negative position is the fear that at some point OSM will be attracted by large commercial companies and somehow negatively affected. Such a granny has long been Google. For some reason, the community believed (in the religious meaning of the word) that he would come soon and capture the project. Yes, and in general, OSM has long been justifying its existence and explaining that it exists in spite of and against Google. Please note that even the Switch2OSM website dedicated to how to start using OSM tiles is not written in the spirit of “Look, what cool tiles are for free”, but “Get away from Google!”.

As a result, this led to the fact that when large and serious companies came to OSM, he was confused. After all, it turned out that no one thinks to capture and absorb it. On the contrary, Microsoft and Facebook are investing in the development of the project and make incredibly cool tools available not only to their employees, but to any cartographer on the planet. But some old-fashioned people still shout from around the corner, afraid of something: “Get out of here! You are not here! ”


OSGeo Coding Sprint (05/17/2019) Minneapolis, USA

- And what to do about it? What reaction do you think is right in this situation?

- The reaction should not be “Leave!”, But “How can we integrate you into the community and not break anything to anyone.” Talk about the rules, the spirit of opensource and collaborative mapping. And pay attention, Facebook has come to all this. How do I understand that? According to his fruits, which he brought to OSM, I am now talking about the online editor RapiD (inside it is artificial intelligence that analyzes satellite images). Does it help OSM get better? It helps. Develops it? Yes. Everything according to OSM rules? Yes. What is the intuitive fear of then?

Such tools, I call them “super-essences” for myself, show that it no longer matters who draws the map in OSM — a living person or a robot. We have long said that the main thing in OSM is not hardware and a card, but people. But what if the neural networks become faster and better every day than the whole living community? And while in OSM there is no mechanism for working with this class of cartographers. It remains to be worked out.


If you fly on an airplane, it’s best to take a normal camera and take pictures from the porthole, then you can snap a georeferencer in QGIS and make a map

- Let's just say: you criticize the OSM Foundation. Have you tried to be elected to his council? After all, this is a way to change something.

- It was such a year . But they did not elect me. My programconsisted of approximately the same thoughts that I voiced to you: you need to work with software, because its development is abandoned. There are two ways to make it better: by hiring specialists for money or by attracting volunteers, including from large companies. So far, neither the OSM Foundation is doing.

It is amazing that in the last election to the OSM Council, several candidates contacted me at once, they found my old program and tried to find out exactly what and how they needed to do it. It pleased me. Still, I'm not the only one to think so.


With the advent of affordable drones, amateur cartography has become easier, (July 2017)

- If the OSM is gradually captured by robots, does it still make sense for a living cartographer to participate in this project? Spend your time drawing a map?

- The project is not going to the bottom. It develops and changes with the world around it. AI is now entering many areas with a soft step, but no one is saying that people will not be needed? There will be something else. What exactly? I do not know. It is quite possible that someone will download the OSM planet dump and based on it will make their own service. Or just OSM will become another dataset in some kind of data warehouse. One of many.

I will return to your question. And when we talk about robots, do not forget that someone must first teach them everything. And in this case, OSM can be seen as a huge educational training ground for them. Therefore, we need teachers - living people. Now that you are drawing a map, you can think about how, according to your edits, in the near future, the robot will learn the basics of mapping. But I can say from my own experience that existing neural networks already know how to do about 60% of cartographic operations per person. And in this story, it is interesting that these data are already enough so that something can be analyzed on them.

But while robots have not yet captured OSM and the world, and, unfortunately, emergencies occur, and therefore cartographers are still needed. Therefore, I recommend taking part in tasks from HOT, as they, in my opinion, do the most useful thing - draw maps where they are exactly and most needed at the moment. Open the Task Manager from HOT and edit the map. This is the best that can be done. After, of course, bypassing all your favorite neighborhoods in order to clarify OSM, much can now be done from a mobile phone: put down addresses, number of floors, POI, etc.

- How many companies in Belarus work with OSM?

- We have made good friends with OSM authorities and big business. Belarusian Cadastral Agencyuses OSM as a substrate, on top of which it places the state cadastre. Vitebskoblgaz (the largest gas supplier in Belarus) developed an internal GIS running on OSM, and therefore hired people who drew the territories and objects it needed in OSM. Therefore, we have one of the best map covers in OSM in the post-Soviet space.

In addition, in Belarus there are several large startups related to GIS and OSM, including the Mapbox team, which moderates absolutely all the edits made to OSM before they render on Mapbox maps. Accordingly, we have a very large concentration of people who own GIS and are familiar with OSM. From time to time they rule him. All this gives a large cumulative effect.

Well, and most importantly, if you do not know, Belarus is the birthplace of the three most famous mobile navigators working with OSM: Maps.Me , OSMAnd and GuruMaps .


The Belarusian OSM community at the OSM Birthday celebration (08/29/2019)

- Why is Belarus so successful in geostarts?

- Maybe we are kinder to people, and therefore more friends with each other? We communicate and interact, but do not swear? I do not know. Decide for yourself, and even better: come to us for the next ByGIS conference and see for yourself.


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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