Originally Posted by
IO540
Probably because they [OpenStreetMap] ripped it off high quality (by which I do not mean TomTom which uses databases several years old) commercial products.
Ah, but my esteemed colleague, you are very wrong there
It is a vastly different model to anything we would have known 10 or 15 years ago so it is not easy to get one's mind around it (even for me, and I have been involved in free software since 1995). However, there is a tightly controlled process which keeps copyright infringement to a minimum (I do not think you can say you are completely free of copyright infringement, as that's very muddy waters, but that's a problem commercial business face just as much).
Incidentally, there is a degree of cooperation between OSM and local and national mapping agencies (the Ordnance Survey for one, strangely enough).
Caveat: considering my background I'm probably much less familiar with OSM than I should be.