Yes indeed, Steve Coast (@SetveC), founder of OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been hired to Microsoft according to this tweet from Steve – this in order to help the company to integrate OSM even tighter with Microsoft apps and services, most notably, Bing Maps I assume. From Microsoft… “Steve will help develop better mapping experiences for our customers and partners, and lead efforts to engage with OpenStreetMap and other open source and open data projects”. Indeed this is an interesting move, particularly as Steve’s wife, Hurricane (See @hurricaneCoast on Twitter) recently enlisted in corporate life as well by joining up with Mapquest in a similar capacity. Indeed this is big news for the OSM community and the open source movement, however, one does have to wonder how this can impact the development and the future of OSM… I mean think about it, we now have AOL (Mapquest) and Microsoft buying up the talent that spurred all this innovation but these are companies that ultimately are responsible to the shareholders.  I guess we’ll be hearing more down the road about OSM mapping tools and apps running on the Win 7 mobile platform and then there’s Google… I wonder who Google will be looking to hire from the OSM camp?? Regardless, good luck to Steve and the Open Source movement. see details on the  Bing Maps Community Blog

This from Steve’s official blog… “Of course, this doesn’t mean Microsoft ‘owns’ OpenStreetMap any more than CloudMade or MapQuest do with the significant resources those firms have put in to making a better map with OSM. OSM continues to be independent as it always will be, and I will continue in my roles to push the OSM cause forward.”

For a detailed look at the effect of this on the mapping community, check out James’ post