Terms of Use
Although the client application can display tiles from a growing number of tile servers, each having its own terms of use or licensing agreement applying to the use of its mapping data. For instance, OpenStreetMaps uses the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. OpenStreetMaps has helped to map areas that are too remote for commercial servers to find profitable. To use other mapping services, you need to check and stay current with their usage agreements.
Many commercial tile servers are freely available for non-commercial purposes, providing you use their proprietary API to access their services. Current commercial mapping APIs are limited to browsers running JavaScript, but, given the rate of change in the mapping services industry this will change all too soon.
In the meantime, OpenStreetMaps has actually helped to change and improve the accuracy of the commercial maps. According to Steve Coast, OpenStreetMaps' founder, some commercial map providers add fake streets to their maps in order to prevent other cartographers from copying their maps. Coast comments that "from OpenStreetMaps' perspective, data providers are giving you bad data on purpose." OpenStreetMaps has helped to uncover a number of fake features that are slowly being removed from some of these commercial tile servers.
Undoubtedly, OpenStreetMaps provides a viable mapping option and has and will continue to put pressure on commercial alternatives. The area of mapping services is a rapidly progressing field and there will certainly expect great innovations in the years ahead.
In Part 2 of this series, you'll learn how to stay current with the inevitable explosion of free mapping services—without recompiling your client's Java code.
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