Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

That landed with broad agreement. People familiar with OSM said the process is strict because the failure mode is obvious. Open datasets attract well-meaning bulk uploads, scraped data, duplicates, stale entries, and license contamination. OSM can recover from a person adding one wrong point. It cannot cheaply recover from thousands of bad points pushed in through a “helpful” app. Several commenters also sharpened an important distinction the post blurred. OSM’s barriers are mostly about automated or intermediary submissions, not ordinary edits. An individual can still add a bookcase directly with an OSM account or through apps like StreetComplete, CoMaps, Organic Maps, MapComplete, or EveryDoor. The most useful framing was that Book Corners has to choose what it wants to be. A custom map that overlays richer app-specific data on top of OSM is easy to sustain. A system that syncs its own database upstream turns into a steward of a source of truth. That sounds lightweight until someone has to handle identity, review, breakages, policy changes, and disputes forever. A few people pointed out workable middle paths. Instead of direct edits, Book Corners could emit “signals” through OSM Notes, MapRoulette tasks, or an ODbL GeoJSON dump for mappers to validate. The author ended up doing part of that immediately by publishing the full library dataset as an ODbL GeoJSON export, which means others can now import or review the data if they want. The other recurring suggestion was to skip the separate database model and make users edit OSM directly via OAuth, with Book Corners acting as a specialized editor and view. The author explicitly rejected that path because it would turn the project into a different app than the one they want to build.