Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When we get Komooted

bikepacking.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 275 posts

Re: When we get Komooted

#51

Post by Guvante »

thomasahle wrote: post #43

Other than entirely community-driven projects (like https://wanderer.to/ mentioned in the article), are there company "forms" that legally protect against this kind of sell-out? Like non-profit or public-benefit-corporation? If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they should have a way to hold the owners accountable.

Honestly it can be quite difficult, generally speaking the best you can do is release the data in raw machine readable format with a permissive license.

Unless you already have large interested parties "bribing" (not technically of course) the group of controlling members tends to be a weakness of anything crowd sourced.

Especially since it is rarely cut and dry. If the finances aren't working out is it better to sell and keep the site online or not? Are intrusive pop ups begging for donations a better option? There isn't a singular true best option.

Re: When we get Komooted

#52

Post by _tbl6 »

dijital wrote: post #7
BozeWolf wrote: post #3

I felt betrayed as well. Just paid €30,- the month or so before because I liked the app and the service, but I also needed more maps. It offered great value to me. If I knew 80% of the employees would be fired, inevitably leading to a degrading service, I would have never done that. It is weird, but I do not trust the app any more in planning routes either. Sometimes i have the feeling bugs in the planning part alrea…

The article mentions one example: https://wanderer.to/ . Haven't used it personally but seems promising (albeit less "social" than something like Strava).

Less "social" would be a feature for me. I just want one that can plan routes, track journeys, and give me directions. I don't want to be worried that I'm accidentally sharing what I'm doing/where I am with the world.

Re: When we get Komooted

#53

Post by Guvante »

jona-f wrote: post #20
poisonborz wrote: post #16

The base premise was already bent: sell access to community-uploaded material. I know Google Maps does this on a much grander scale but at least the data is more or less accessible for everyone. I wonder why there aren't popular free/open projects that do what Komoot does. What they did above the contributions seem to be doable by a dedicated group or a nonprofit.

There is openstreetmaps of course and osmand as a navigation app. There is also a biking specific project related to openstreetmaps. None of it is as polished as komoot of course. Far from it. This sell-out was totally predictable. Why the outrage? Do people never learn? It's so frustrating.

I think it is fair to be annoyed that crowd sourcing is used to enrich a select few.

Honestly the best course of action is to let it die. $300M is enough money that losing the user base would be enough for similar things to stop happening.

Re: When we get Komooted

#54

Post by blitzar »

thrance wrote: post #44
pentamassiv wrote: post #11

Next years article: When We Get Bikepacked Never believe a company that you are part of a community if the content you create for them cannot be exported and published somewhere else. I am especially sceptical if someone says they never sell.

bikepacking.com doesn't look like it's a for-profit company, in their about page.

bikepacking.com looks like it's a for-profit company based on their about page.

Re: When we get Komooted

#56

Post by oreilles »

avhception wrote: post #24

As someone who always rejected Komoot and stuck to OpenStreetMap, and had to justify that decision multiple times: I'll play them the world's smallest violin.

This article is about people who liked their company and their job and lost it all. It's something to lack empathy, but I'm always amazed that there are people so full of themselves that they will go out there and proclaim that they don't give a shit about other people's fate, as if it was something to be proud about.

Re: When we get Komooted

#57

Post by Eavolution »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #6

To be fair, komoot already had plenty of dark patterns in place to produce growth and conversion.

Such as what? I found it a very fair deal, you can have functionality for your area for free, which will likely be good enough for 70%+ of people, but if you want larger regions you have to pay. It seems to me a totally fair and transparent pricing structure, without resorting to filling the app with ads.

The people who need the paid portion of the app are also likely enthusiasts, and in that light the pricing seems fair too.

Re: When we get Komooted

#58

Post by NoboruWataya »

thomasahle wrote: post #43

Other than entirely community-driven projects (like https://wanderer.to/ mentioned in the article), are there company "forms" that legally protect against this kind of sell-out? Like non-profit or public-benefit-corporation? If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they should have a way to hold the owners accountable.

There are non-profit corporations which seem on their face to address the issue, but not knowing much about how they work, it seems to me that it is often too easy to convert them to for-profit corporations, as happened with Raspberry Pi. I think in Europe a lot of open source organisations are "foundations" which seem to operate on similar principles.

IMO non-profit or charitable status is a must for sustainable, open, community-driven projects. One of the dumbest takes I often hear is "this for-profit corporation was good and kind before financial capitalism came along". Financial capitalism was always there, the for-profit corporation is pretty much a pure product of financial capitalism. Don't believe any for-profit startup that tells you it is all about the social mission, it is not. Even if the company is European.

Re: When we get Komooted

#59

Post by [deleted] »

benterix wrote: post #47
lycopodiopsida wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing unethical about: you are doing the only sane thing in this system and economics. Morons, who work themselves to death believing bosses shit-talk about “our mission” and “we are in this together” will learn it the hard way.

Try saying that on LinkedIn and watch the reactions. There is a huge difference between what you can feel and do, and what you can say.

[deleted]

Re: When we get Komooted

#60

Post by rglullis »

> Unsustainable growth is not just ideology but an imperative, and it’s blatantly unsustainable. In a 2023 interview, Hallerman revealed that Komoot’s revenue was roughly split between recurring subscriptions and new users making one-time payments for map regions, with ad revenue making up a small remainder. That means they had to keep signing new users and expanding into new markets to stay in business. Komoot relied on continual growth in a finite world—an impossibility. What cannot continue forever is, by definition, unsustainable.

Relying solely on "community" to build and maintain these spaces is equally unsustainable. I worry that people will look at this and think that the alternative is to reject all forms of businesses, when the problem is simply of scale.

Post reply on HN