

In December 2007, Oxford University became the first major organisation to use OpenStreetMap data on their main website. In October 2007, OpenStreetMap completed the import of a US Census TIGER road dataset. Sponsors of the event included Google, Yahoo! and Multimap. By July 2007, when the first OpenStreetMap international The State of the Map conference was held, there were 9,000 registered users. In April 2007, Automotive Navigation Data (AND) donated a complete road data set for the Netherlands and trunk road data for India and China to the project. In December 2006, Yahoo! confirmed that OpenStreetMap could use its aerial photography as a backdrop for map production. In April 2006, the OpenStreetMap Foundation was established to encourage the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and provide geospatial data for anybody to use and share. The first contribution was made in the city of London in 2005. In the UK and elsewhere, government-run and tax-funded projects like the Ordnance Survey created massive datasets but declined to freely and widely distribute them. Steve Coast founded the project in 2004 while at university in Britain, initially focusing on mapping the United Kingdom. The founder of OpenStreetMap, Steve Coast, in 2009 The database is hosted by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, a non-profit organisation registered in England and Wales and is funded mostly via donations.

OpenStreetMap's adoption was accelerated by Google Maps's introduction of pricing in 2012 and the development of supporting software and applications. TIGER and by tracing permitted aerial photography. Initially, maps were created only via GPS traces, but it was quickly populated by importing public domain geographical data such as the U.S. In 2004, OpenStreetMap was created by Steve Coast in response to the Ordnance Survey, the United Kingdom's national mapping agency, failing to release its data to the public and under free licences. The OpenStreetMap website itself is an online map, geodata search engine and editor. OpenStreetMap uses its own topology to store geographical features which can then be exported into other GIS file formats. OpenStreetMap is freely licensed under the Open Database License and as a result commonly used to make electronic maps, inform turn-by-turn navigation, assist in humanitarian aid and data visualisation. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed geodata sources. OpenStreetMap ( OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration.
