Just switching by itself is a huge contribution.
And I also think they pay to use it, since commercial usage is not free.
I dont think they pay anything I the article itself it says it’s free to use and that the main factor to switch were the costs. In the comments there people also say that DHL doesn’t seem to donate to the project.
Here ist the part from the article translated to English:
Since there has been no announcement of the change from either Deutsche Post or DHL, the reasons for this step remain unclear. Presumably, cost reasons may have played a role. Deutsche Post had to pay fees to Google for the use of Google Maps. The data of Openstreetmap is under a free license and may be used without payment of license fees.
I dont think they pay anything I the article itself it says it’s free to use
The data is free to download. Someone has to host the map data and that’s either a 3rd party provider or self-hosted. Both cost money.
Of course, but that’s not what the previous poster was talking about. They were talking about commercial use of the data.
Someone also answered the hosting question on the golem forum, they do host it themselves: https://forum.golem.de/kommentare/opensource/paketverfolgung-und-mehr-post-und-dhl-wechseln-von-google-maps-zu-openstreetmap/immerhin-laedt-die-post-die-daten-von-den-eigenen-servern/170687,6788315,6788315,read.html
since commercial usage is not free
Commercial usage oft the osm data is free, see the OSM license. The article even speculates that they switched from Google maps due to licenses costs.
Of course this doesn’t apply to commercial services that provide e.g. map tiles.
