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Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

protomaps.com

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Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#31

Post by elaus »

robertlagrant wrote: post #8

> The Google Maps API has a generous free tier, but high fees past 30,000 map loads. Protomaps is designed from the ground up to be a system you run yourself - as a 100% static backend on cloud storage - so you only incur the usage costs of storing and serving that data, which can be pennies for moderate usage. It would be interesting to see a cost comparison: recommended hosting setup vs Google Maps, and at what poi…

I haven't found this info in the FAQ, but it would be interesting to know how large that PMTiles file is for a medium-sized country.

It seems to be a really attractive way of self-hosting maps that don't have to be 100% up to date and are only used in a specific region. "Recompiling" that file once a year and uploading it to a static file hoster would be an easy process with very little external dependencies.

Edit: Found the official download link[1] for the whole world, which is a bit over 100 GB. So I guess the answer to my question would be "hundreds of MB to a few GB", which seems totally fine.

[1] https://docs.protomaps.com/basemaps/downloads

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#32

Post by bdon »

INTPenis wrote: post #3

Usually .com domains were used by commercial entities, and protomaps.com seems like it might have cost some money. I don't fully understand LLC except that they protect owners from company liability. Just trying to figure out what the goal for this company is.

I'm the owner of said commercial company.

LLCs in this context signal "This company has no outside investors", because almost every venture-backed technology company will be organized as a C Corporation instead.

I am choosing to run this open source project through a commercial company - that enables me to have a bank account, use GitHub Sponsors, pay others for work, and enter in support and development contracts with other companies and the public sector. Non-profit foundations like US 501(c)(3) aren't practical to create for solo developers.

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#33

Post by bdon »

Chabsff wrote: post #19
INTPenis wrote: post #3

Usually .com domains were used by commercial entities, and protomaps.com seems like it might have cost some money. I don't fully understand LLC except that they protect owners from company liability. Just trying to figure out what the goal for this company is.

From what I can tell, it's a for-profit company for a single dev that is attempting to get by through nothing but GitHub Sponsorships. Said sponsorship is a requirement for using the pre-hosted files for commercial uses in a SaaS-like manner. But some of the wording in the faq is a bit confusing. E.G. There's a whole section about "Why don't you just sell plans for the hosted API?" right after detailing how to sign u…

That is correct, in addition I have contracts with companies for support as well as development of open source features.

The hosted API is "free" in the sense that there are no tiers. The API costs me money to run, which is why I require a GitHub sponsorship for commercial use. This is ideal for use cases where deploying your own tileset is impractical.

If you are using the hosted API heavily then it makes sense for you to "graduate" to deploying it yourself.

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#34

Post by bdon »

globular-toast wrote: post #22

I wonder if Github Pages supports HTTP range. Obviously putting a multi-GB blob on there would probably be abuse, but a small blob limited to a small region with limited detail would be really nice for having a map to accompany a blog post or something.

It does, but there is a limit of something like 500 MB for single files.

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#35

Post by bdon »

ulrischa wrote: post #21

Cool but basemaps are a very tricky thing from a geographers perspective. There are several border conflicts. When it is open source there could be some manipulation. Immediatelly getting downvoted. All I'm saying is that official map boundaries these days should be used. Because I can again not post because too fast here my clarification: I mean official not commercial or proprietary

Indeed!

The Protomaps project encompasses the generation of basemap PMTiles and the ecosystem for delivering them to clients. It supplies a standard daily build from OpenStreetMap, and since the generation is open source it can be customized to conform with your specific requirements.

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#36

Post by toinewx »

how did you deal with the china map part?

AFAIK it is illegal to distribute accurate geographical data about China without their authorization.

You can distribute the one that is slightly inaccurate, such as what provides google maps or apple maps for non chinese users

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#37

Post by mberg »

I've been an avid Mapbox user since getting alpha access to Tilemill. From my perspective, this is the most important contribution to the open mapping space since the introduction of vector tiles and Mapbox GL / Map GL. Mapbox in my opinion left the door open in how they approached tile baking with MTS. While powerful it was way to confusing and expensive. While you could always bake tiles with Tippecanoe you still had to struggle with vector tile hosting hosting. With PMTIles vector tile hosting is arguably easier, more convenient and an order of magnitude cheaper then going with Mapbox (especially if you don't need fancy projection / 3d support and are ok with MapLibre). Felt is one of the major services that I believe uses the PMTile approach behind the scenes and they won't be the last. (Notably: they have continued to invest in Tippecanoe which is awesome). With Mapbox focus shifting, it appears, to car navigation - it's great to see disruptive innovation coming from new places. Even more amazing that is has come from a one person team.

Also to note, the emergence of PMTiles coincides DuckDB spatial query support will unlock a lot of innovation. The ability to query and process large geoparquet files and quickly stream them into baked PMTiles unlocks a lot of really compelling use cases.

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#38

Post by carlosjobim »

ulrischa wrote: post #21

Cool but basemaps are a very tricky thing from a geographers perspective. There are several border conflicts. When it is open source there could be some manipulation. Immediatelly getting downvoted. All I'm saying is that official map boundaries these days should be used. Because I can again not post because too fast here my clarification: I mean official not commercial or proprietary

There are no "official map boundaries" when it comes to conflicted borders.

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#39

Post by bdon »

wiredfool wrote: post #11
AlbertoGP wrote: post #7

For me the most interesting part is “PMTiles”: > PMTiles is a single-file archive format for pyramids of tiled data. A PMTiles archive can be hosted on a storage platform like S3, and enables low-cost, zero-maintenance map applications. > PMTiles is a general format for tiled data addressed by Z/X/Y coordinates. This can be cartographic basemap vector tiles, remote sensing observations, JPEG images, or more. > PMTile…

Pmtiles are the vector counterpart to Cloud Optimized GEOTIFF (COG), allowing for efficient usage of mapping info from clients when the server supports a http range request. Previous iterations of this on the vector side have either been a ton of small files(pbf) or a large file that needed a front end to serve the individual tiles (mbtiles). At this point, you can take an OSM dump and convert it to a country level b…

Generating country level basemaps from scratch is a great approach!

I've made an even easier path which is to just extract the relevant tiles from a daily build: https://docs.protomaps.com/guide/getting-started

This can take seconds to minutes for small-medium areas and doesn't need a powerful computer at all. The drawbacks are that the build is only daily, and the lower-zoom tiles aren't clipped so include extra information beyond your specified area.

Re: Protomaps – A free and open source map of the world

#40

Post by YoshiRulz »

ulrischa wrote: post #21

Cool but basemaps are a very tricky thing from a geographers perspective. There are several border conflicts. When it is open source there could be some manipulation. Immediatelly getting downvoted. All I'm saying is that official map boundaries these days should be used. Because I can again not post because too fast here my clarification: I mean official not commercial or proprietary

I think the downvotes may be because people take "When it is open source there could be some manipulation" to mean that you think proprietary alternatives are somehow safe from such manipulation—but of course they aren't, least of all Google Maps.
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