Call me melodramatic, but I believe that OSM is one of humanity's great achievements in the last 200 years.
Throughout nearly all of human history, one of the most difficult questions to answer was "where the hell am I?" and an even harder question was "how do I get to where I want to go?" Anyone can now answer both of those questions for free, within seconds, with accuracy within 3 or 4 yards. And, when it's wrong, they can contribute back to it instantly. OSM is the logical conclusion to one of the most difficult technical endeavours ever taken on by humans. It's astonishing when you think about it like that.
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One of the nice things about OSM is you can profit from it from it if you want to.
I don’t think you’ll find even most the die hard OSM fan disagree with you on the POI data.
On the other hand, the road network in OSM is very high quality. As you point out, it’s used and contributed to by companies like Lyft and Amazon.
The fact that anyone can download an accurate detailed global road network for free is pretty crazy.
Call me melodramatic, but I believe that OSM is one of humanity's great achievements in the last 200 years.
Throughout nearly all of human history, one of the most difficult questions to answer was "where the hell am I?" and an even harder question was "how do I get to where I want to go?" Anyone can now answer both of those questions for free, within seconds, with accuracy within 3 or 4 yards. And, when it's wrong, they can contribute back to it instantly. OSM is the logical conclusion to one of the most difficult technical endeavours ever taken on by humans. It's astonishing when you think about it like that.