It was designed and developed by a state-owned start-up and is updated and maintained by a community of volunteers and IGN staff.

[1] Initially, the project was designed to respond to the problems encountered by local authorities and other French stakeholders.

The Panoramax instance of OSM France publishes images under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0, with an added authorization to generate non-photogrpahic data under an open database license (ODbL).

[14][18][19] There are multiple ways to contribute and access images, including the website, a command-line interface and API, as well as a mobile application that is currently in development.

[30] Use cases include being able to monitor conditions of the roads and street furniture, signs, trees, overhead cables, or to verify compliance with regulations on advertising displays.