This is because everything is in digital form. Essentially all government systems are digital-first, and for the citizen, often digital-only. If the data is lost, there may be no paper records to restore everything from land registry, business registry (operating agreements, ownership records), etc.
Without an out-of-country backup, a reversion to previous statuses means the country is lost (Estonia has been occupied a lot). With it, much of the government can continue to function, as an expat government until freedom and independence is restored.
For a good geocoder, you need many other data sources (which can be open). OpenAddresses (https://openaddresses.io/) is an example of a vital dataset to delivering anything of any quality.
Returning real results requires extensive parsing and awareness of addresses and place data (including localization of them), and this is not something you get for free based on OSM data.
It was originally based on Pelias, but we've since augmented with additional data sources (such as Foursquare OS Places) and significantly improved the baseline for performance and accuracy.
> permanently storing results for future use (e.g., as a database column), in part or in whole, from the Stadia Maps Geocoding APIs without an active Standard, Professional, or Enterprise subscription with appropriate permissions;
Thanks - that quote is from a list under the heading "Furthermore, you herein agree not to make use of Stadia Maps, Inc.’s Services in any of the following ways:"
(Having scanned those terms I'm still not 100% certain I can confidently answer all three of my questions though. A classic challenge with this is that terms often have language that relates to map tile images, but it's hard to derive if those same terms apply to geocoded lat/lon points.)
> Unlike most vendors, we won't charge you 10x the standard fee per request to store geocoding results long-term! However, we do require an active Standard, Professional, or Enterprise subscription to permanently store results (e.g. in a database). Temporary storage in the normal course of your work is allowed on all plans. See our terms of service for the full legal terms.
In the case of OpenStreetMap-derived geocoding, of course, their terms of service can say "we won't continue to sell to you if that's what you're doing". But the data itself is ODbL-licensed so once you've got it, you can keep it.
I wonder if you can sign a contract with them that locks in your subscription pricing for all time (I imagine not) - without that you risk them jacking up the price on you once you're heavily invested (after they sell the company to Oracle.)
Definitely drop us a line. Our v2 response structure is still undergoing some iteration, especially around the particulars of labeling, so this may be intended (depending on the specific query), but we can certainly look into it to confirm that.
The green card system is already broken (this is pretty universally agreed). The notion that receiving a degree in the US—which often entails a large degree of cultural assimilation—doesn't give you a strong argument for being able to stay if you can find a job is archaic.
It's not like large tech companies don't know how to employee people in other countries, so I doubt this is going to impact hiring rates of foreign US-graduates, but rather keep more talent in the US (good for the US) and should have little to no effect on wages (again, if a tech company wants to hire them, they'll just hire them at a foreign office where they can obtain a working permit).
Isn't this a bit like saying we're still in Google's world because most maps still use Web Mercator? :)
Good tech builds on what came before. Mapbox did a lot of ground-breaking work in building tooling around OSM, but so have many others. The fact that they named it Mapbox Vector Tiles is genius in hindsight, because even though we may use tons of tooling they didn't create to build and render them, their name is still there.
> The next challenge is to evolve the tech stack to something beyond what Mapbox worked up five/ten years ago.
Agreed, and I think we've seen a lot of iterative work in the open since then. The next challenge is likely building a OSS stack to do proper 3D: open data (including OSM) to pixels, and that work is already beginning across a lot of organizations: https://github.com/nyurik/future-mvt/discussions, Overture Maps, MapLibre, etc.
I get the parent comment. There are good alteratives to the mapbox ecosystem though they arent always used because people see mapbox as default
DeckGL for instance is a very innovative js library for front end (really developed by Uber I believe), with better 3d and movement, better with dealing data at scale, etc.
Prettymaps is a pure python approach to rendering OSM data.
Hey guys not affiliated with Stadia but I can vouch for them, I use it in one of my products for a few years now and never heard a complaint, only nice things.
You can't go wrong with them.
Without an out-of-country backup, a reversion to previous statuses means the country is lost (Estonia has been occupied a lot). With it, much of the government can continue to function, as an expat government until freedom and independence is restored.