\r\nThroughout the ages, cartography has always aimed to offer a simplification of the world. Since its digitalization, online map services have proliferated. But, in real terms, your itineraries are being sourced from just two protagonists: on the one hand, the big beasts of the web, and on the other, open source, which, whilst more discreet, still manages to provide maps richer in detail and updated more rapidly.\r\n<\/p>\n\n\n
A little refresher course may well be required before plunging headlong into the article. \u2018Open source? That\u2019s when you can pick through the parameters of a programme to kind of help yourself to it, no?\u2019 Although imprecise, the definition suggested by the most inexperienced users of information technology is not entirely inaccurate. Open source (OS) in fact consists of making the source code of a software programme or a website accessible to the general public. The freedom to use, the freedom to modify, and the freedom to distribute modifications are the three guiding principles which govern OS. It was a woman, Christine Peterson, an American forecaster and co-founder of the Foresight Institute, who suggested the expression in 1998, as a means of removing any confusion with the other anglophone terminology, \u2018free software.\u2019 And contrary to received wisdom, the initiatives available on OS are not merely restricted to the non-profit domain. According to a recent French study commissioned by the National Free Software Council<\/a>, OS is today worth 6 billion Euros in France, 40 times what it was 20 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As open source is a key component in the most dynamic domains of the digital world such as artificial intelligence and Big Data, GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, editor\u2019s note) are also increasingly investing in OS solutions. For their part, governments are also looking into OS in terms of ethics and sovereignty issues. And frankly, who wouldn\u2019t be interested in software which is more often than not free-of-charge and regularly updated thanks to the involvement of a large community of programmers passionate about information technology and OS?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018On the whole, we still tend to instinctively open a Google window to find an answer to our questions, but we use open source a good deal more than we are aware of,\u2019 smiles Thierry Jim\u00e9nez, a contributor to and member of the board of directors of OpenStreetMap Belgium<\/a>. Linux<\/a>, the popular operating system, its mobile phone descendant Android<\/a>, WordPress<\/a>, the content management platform widely used for the creation of websites and blogs, and of course, the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia<\/a>, which could be said to rely almost entirely on OS. And then there are other perhaps less well-known initiatives, such as OpenStreetMap<\/a> (OSM for those in the inner circle). \u2018A kind of alternative Google Street View, independent and open to all,\u2019 continues Thierry Jim\u00e9nez.Mad about maps<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
It was during a briefing evening on cycling in urban environments that the kingkong<\/em> editorial team first heard OSM being mentioned. And more specifically the somewhat crazy project dreamed up by a cyclist: St\u00e9phane De Greef<\/a>, a bioengineer, perched over the handlebars of an overequipped bicycle and protected by a helmet to which was screwed his ever-present GoPro. This little camera enabled him to achieve a flight of fancy which would seem immoderately excessive to common mortals: filling the gaps of Brussels cartography for those forgotten by the Google giant. Roaming on his bike, within the space of a short month, he had charted no less than 4,500 kilometres of avenues, regional roads, cycle lanes and even forest paths invisible on Google Street View. Nothing escaped him, not even the alleys within cul-de-sacs. \u2018I took around 600,000 images in 360\u00b0,\u2019 he estimates. \u2018Obviously, I spend many, many hours systematically outlining my routes, to avoid going back and forth over the same segments.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n