Development of the Openfietsmap
My name is Minko, developer of the Openfietsmap. From childhood interested in maps and cycling. Check out my website with my bicycle touring adventures.
I've started developing the Openfietsmap since I bought my first GPS device in 2007, a Garmin Etrex Venture CX. At that time only a few free maps were available for the Garmin and none of them suited me. With the help of mkgmap software and Charlie Ferrero's excellent tutorials I've learned how to build the maps from Openstreetmap data and started in 2010 with publishing them for the public.
Main focus of the Openfietsmap is cycling, so the routing will try to follow cycling lanes and routes as much as possible. Car routing is not supported. For hiking these maps are also suitable, but not optimized.
The Openstreetmap project
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. The geodata underlying the map is considered the primary output of the project. OSM was inspired by the success of Wikipedia and created by Steve Coast in the UK in 2004. Since then, it has grown to over two million registered users. Users may collect data using manual survey, GPS devices, aerial photography, and other free sources, or use their own local knowledge of the area. This crowdsourced data is then made available under the Open Database License [source: wikipedia].
The Openstreetmap data in the Netherlands is quite detailed since the the donation of the complete streetnetwork by AND in 2007. However, a lot of cyclepaths were not part of this AND network and were added by volunteers. Many imports later and thanks to the volunteers, OSM maps have become quite accurate and still getting better, but unfortunately this is not everywhere the case yet. It would be great if the users of this map can participate in the Openstreetmap project to make the OSM maps even better. This can be done by reporting errors, adding GPS tracks to the map database, adding or editing missing roads and bike paths, adding waypoints etc. For more info visit the participating section.