MapRoulette has come a long way since starting over a decade ago as a simple tool to fix road imports in the United States. Since its inception, we completely overhauled the design, made it easy for anyone to create and manage challenges, added review and moderation, and most recently integrated OSM editing right into MapRoulette itself.
All this progress would not have been possible without the tireless work of the MapRoulette community. As MapRoulette becomes more complex, it requires more resources for maintenance and, more importantly, future innovations. These improvements will be possible thanks to MapRoulette’s first investor, TomTom. David Salmon, Senior Project Manager, Community & Partnerships at TomTom, says:
“TomTom is proud to support MapRoulette, an easy-to-use task manager for the OpenStreetMap (OSM) community to explore new types of mapping activities and discover what others are working on. We believe in the power of open-source mapping and the community-driven approach to create a comprehensive and up-to-date map. TomTom’s support for MapRoulette reflects our commitment and belief in OSM as a global and inclusive mapping ecosystem.”
With the support of volunteers and financial backers like TomTom, MapRoulette has become a critical part of mapping workflows in OSM communities globally as well as institutional and corporate users of OSM data. If your organization uses MapRoulette, we challenge you to follow Tomtom’s lead and invest in the future of MapRoulette. As the map looks more and more “done”, a tool such as MapRoulette has become critical to maintaining and advancing the quality of OpenStreetMap data by helping mappers find and organize meaningful mapping tasks.
As an individual contributor and mapper, you can also show your support for the project! We’re asking the OpenStreetMap community to meet or beat TomTom’s donation by raising another $5,000 through individual donations by the end of this year. Let’s celebrate 10 years of MapRoulette by reaching our year-end goal of $10,000 to support maintenance costs into the new year! Every dollar raised helps support data quality in OpenStreetMap!
MapRoulette is a volunteer-run project fiscally hosted by OpenStreetMap US, a US-based 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. All donations and financial investments towards the project are tax deductible. For more information on how to invest in MapRoulette, please email info@maproulette.org
