FAQ

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the Wikipedia of mapping—a crowd-sourced, openly licensed alternative to Big Map. Instead of one company owning the map, anyone can add and verify places, and the data belongs to the public. ROSM writes every fountain update straight to OSM, so the information lives somewhere durable and open.

As someone using the map, it is easier to trust that this map is kept up to date—in fact, it requires no faith, since you can see how long ago a fountain was verified. From the perspective of a community maintainer contributing to the map, this being a decentralized piece of information means there is no bottleneck for updating the map. Anyone can make a contribution to the map in real time. And even if—EVEN IF—the whole ROSM project blew up and vanished, the data and contribution history is actually stored with the long-established and well-reputed OpenStreetMap.

The authentication approach taken by ROSM is different from most apps. You can think of ROSM as a wrapper around the OpenStreetMap (OSM) platform. For example, if you were to mark a fountain as out of order, ROSM formats that information and immediately submits it to OSM. In this way, ROSM retains no information about the people who use it—your authentication is completely local to your device, and it creates a portal for you to interact with OSM.

If you wanted to see the complete history of updates you submitted to OSM, you would want to look at your OSM account.

All this is to say: you need to create an account through OSM instead of ROSM because OSM is the place your information really lives. The only thing ROSM does is facilitate a very specific type of data manipulation. Because the UI for OSM is meant to support updating information about buildings and roads and businesses and countries, it needs to take a pretty general approach to the design. ROSM simplifies the many clicks it would take to update a fountain into just a few, and then it ships that information off to OSM to be safely recorded for public use.

If you want to share feedback on your experience using ROSM, email me at james@btv.dev! And if you have a little experience writing code, feel free to make a pull request!

Right now, the focus is on documenting fountains as a public amenity, and once this proof of concept is locked down, branching out to recording and maintaining data for other public amenities. Things like public restrooms, picnic tables, parks, bike racks, etc.