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A community-led fork of Organic Maps

comaps.app

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Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#11

Post by johannes1234321 »

netbioserror wrote: post #7
ano-ther wrote: post #2

What’s the backstory? > There was no real progress in negotiations with Organic Maps shareholders. > It appears that Viktor is only open to a guarantee not to sell the project, however besides that he wants to retain full control of Organic Maps. > And Organic Maps future is uncertain still, as the disagreement between shareholders (Viktor and Roman) has not been resolved.

I'm more partial to a BDFL than a committee, so I'm not sure why I'd prefer this fork. Community management is not a de facto improvement.

BDFL is a good concept. As long as money stays out of it. If the DFL collects money in a for profit Organisation and isn't transparent about usage, this is unsatisfactory to other contributors.

I am not sure there is a huge market for selling the company, though, given the track record of the owners for taking the money and then forking away and trying to pull the users over.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#15

Post by RetroTechie »

Sad how much good stuff gets destroyed by non-benevolent dictators and/or greed.

Let's hope a community-led fork does so well that OM becomes a footnote in history. Or it causes OM owners to make a U-turn (but who cares @ this point. Just go ahead with community-led effort).

Would need a new name though. How about a public-is-invited contest?

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#17

Post by Freak_NL »

RetroTechie wrote: post #15

Sad how much good stuff gets destroyed by non-benevolent dictators and/or greed. Let's hope a community-led fork does so well that OM becomes a footnote in history. Or it causes OM owners to make a U-turn (but who cares @ this point. Just go ahead with community-led effort). Would need a new name though. How about a public-is-invited contest?

> Would need a new name though. How about a public-is-invited contest?

Like the one linked to in the article?

https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/issues/34

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#18

Post by Freak_NL »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #13

Why do people contribute to Organic Maps and not to OSM? I always assumed that Organic Maps was a sophisticated way to distribute OSM data, nothing more.

Do you mean 'contribute' or 'donate'? Contributing fixes, bug reports, and code to FOSS projects using OpenStreetMap data makes sense to me, if they do something you appreciate.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#19

Post by SamWhited »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #13

Why do people contribute to Organic Maps and not to OSM? I always assumed that Organic Maps was a sophisticated way to distribute OSM data, nothing more.

Organic Maps is a way to distribute OSM data, but it also has a lot more than just the OSM maps it uses (code to curate and collect those maps into downloadable packs, code to display them, code to do routing, design assets and resources for the app, documentation, etc.)

You're correct that the maps are OSM though, you can always contribute to OSM and that will also help Organic Maps (or whatever new community based map project comes out!)

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#20

Post by Y_Y »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a license/contract/blood oath that projects could start with that guaranteed that the owner couldn't commercialise a project late in the game?

Afaik what Organic Maps (and plenty of notable projects) have done is above board in terms of law and licensing, and reasonable people may differ on the ethics. I don't even think it should be impossible to do what they did. It just strikes me that we should all be on the same page from the start, especially so that volunteer labour doesn't end up being commercialised or locked down in a way the contributor reasonably didn't expect. This is important because burning volunteers hurts FOSS (not to mention the cost to users).

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