Global nonprofit organization Linux Foundation partnered with Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and TomTom to launch Overture Maps Foundation which can potentially give competition to Google Maps.

In a press release the executive director for the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin said, “we are excited to facilitate this open collaboration among leading technology companies to develop high quality, open map data that will enable untold innovations for the benefit of people, companies, and communities”.

It is a new collaborative effort to develop interoperable open map data as a shared asset that can strengthen mapping services worldwide. Map data will be open and extensible by all under an open data license.

The group of companies is also looking for other partners to support the new initiative as mapping is quite a complex niche.