> We expect that all components of software be free for us to tinker with and repurpose.
OSM, along with its cousins-in-spirit projects Wikipedia and Libre Software are not about hacking on software. They are about building a society.
A society where no one has to depend on someone else. A society where everyone can learn and share with its co-citizens.
The number one foundation for building this society is that data be:
* accessible without needing explicit authorization,
* modifiable without needing explicit authorization,
* shareable with anyone without needing explicit authorization
in short, what the Free Software definition [0] does for software, but generalized to knowledge (for Wikipedia) or geographical position (for OSM).
By using and (worse !) contributing to Google Maps, you don't build this society. You trust Google to do it; but that's not the reason why Google exists, so you can't be sure about that. Plus, if you recall not-so-old history, you must remember how easy it is for Google to unplug applications even if they are used.
Google is giving you great, shiny toys to play with. But you can only build the present with them. I'd rather trust the future in a Foundation than in a company whose goal is to make money.
If you had to wrap projects together like Wikipedia, OSM, etc (open data sets that you could argue are the foundation of society), what would you call the collection?
Yes, of course, that goal is utopian (well, I hope we don't follow the definition too closely and actually reach the dream). But the good thing is that they don't depend on time, money or anything else. It's a belief, and the people's mind will change over time.
You could draw a parallel with ecology. 50 years ago, no one would care about the environment; resources were basically free, pollution was seen as "minor". A world were everyone cared about the planet was seen as utopian. After half a decade of fights, the minds have now switched to a different mind (at least in the western world): pretty much every single piece of electronic hardware you can buy has some notion of "we-are-green" to it. While it's not 100% eco-friendly (just take a look at how electronics are "recycled"), people's mind certainly have changed. The guys behind the Libre software movement certainly don't expect anything big happening in the next 10 years (remember that RMS has been fighting for the last 30 years), but things will change, you can be sure of it. Just take a look at the recent plans to to "take control back" on the internet infrastructures initiated by Europe and Brazil. Sure, technically the things will more or less remain the same; but the mindset is changing, and it will keep spreading.
> How about a less grandiose goal like "making software better and more accessible"
This is a really noble goal in itself, and Google can be praised as one of the biggest enablers in this field, seeing how much they have changed the domain. While I may not sound like it, I actually thank them for all they did to the tech world, and the end-users in general (with an extraordinary amount of stuff available as OSS). Actually, that goal is more or less what OSS tries to achieve, except that the target is not the end user but the developer: the goal is to make sure that developers don't reinvent the wheel again and again and again.
But that goal is orthogonal to what the Libre movement (FSF, OSM, Wikipedia) fights for. That goal can very well be accomplished with private companies: in the majority of cases, they help society by building better and more accessible "things", because that's a sure way to make money (with the notable exception of US telcos), and money is what they're here for. But that doesn't mean you are independent; it's quite the contrary in fact, because their tool is so easy and powerful to use that you just use them. This is what many people call a walled garden: you can live in a complete ecosystem, where everything works perfectly together... but once you start wandering around, you quickly realize that there are boundaries to what you can do [0]. The tech world is even worse than this description, because everything can change in 10 years; you can't expect all your belongings to remain accessible at the end of your lifetime.
The FSF doesn't want to build better software. There even was a post recently mocking their logos. They want to build software so that you don't need to depend on anyone else. If you don't depend on anyone else, you can do whatever you want.
OSM, along with its cousins-in-spirit projects Wikipedia and Libre Software are not about hacking on software. They are about building a society.
A society where no one has to depend on someone else. A society where everyone can learn and share with its co-citizens.
The number one foundation for building this society is that data be:
* accessible without needing explicit authorization,
* modifiable without needing explicit authorization,
* shareable with anyone without needing explicit authorization
in short, what the Free Software definition [0] does for software, but generalized to knowledge (for Wikipedia) or geographical position (for OSM).
By using and (worse !) contributing to Google Maps, you don't build this society. You trust Google to do it; but that's not the reason why Google exists, so you can't be sure about that. Plus, if you recall not-so-old history, you must remember how easy it is for Google to unplug applications even if they are used.
Google is giving you great, shiny toys to play with. But you can only build the present with them. I'd rather trust the future in a Foundation than in a company whose goal is to make money.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html