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

Organic Maps

organicmaps.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 382 posts

Re: Organic Maps

#91

Post by cryo32 »

beart wrote: post #68
physicalecon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case. Also people got upset that the developers used the product funding to pay for their personal expenses. The idea is folks want the developers to isolate all the money they make from this project and use it to only pay expenses directly related to this project. If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably. https://www.comap…

> If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably. The tone of this comment is quite different from the text of the open letter to which you refer. Specifically this section. I don't have any personal knowledge either way, but this stood out to me. > As it was revealed by Roman @rtsisyk it wasn't unusual for the Shareholders to use project's donations as their own money e.g. Alexander @biodranik pa…

Going on holiday is why I work. And I use organic maps when I’m on holiday. And donate. Good luck to them.

Re: Organic Maps

#92

Post by JumpCrisscross »

random3 wrote: post #80
Yacoby wrote: post #3

There is also CoMaps ( https://www.comaps.app/ ) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/

Thank you! This is highly relavant. I wish OPs would put a bit more research into what they post https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/ > Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from t…

> a small group of shareholders

This is sketchy. The entity at the bottom of the page is Organic Maps OÜ, which is an Estonian private limited company. Estonia has non-profits (MTÜs). The fact that this isn't organised as one makes it a commercial venture, except one that asks for donations.

Re: Organic Maps

#93

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cryo32 wrote: post #91
beart wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably. The tone of this comment is quite different from the text of the open letter to which you refer. Specifically this section. I don't have any personal knowledge either way, but this stood out to me. > As it was revealed by Roman @rtsisyk it wasn't unusual for the Shareholders to use project's donations as their own money e.g. Alexander @biodranik pa…

Going on holiday is why I work. And I use organic maps when I’m on holiday. And donate. Good luck to them.

> And donate

How do you square this with Organic Maps being organised as a for-profit entity?

Re: Organic Maps

#94

Post by palata »

einpoklum wrote: post #84

How does Organic Maps differ from Maps.Me (which it also mentions), or PocketEarth mentiond in comments here? Or CoMaps for that matter? I've had Maps.Me on my phone for some years; it's often not as accurate or polished as the commercial offerings (Google, Here Technologies), but it's pretty nice. What might make me switch?

In terms of forks, I believe it was Maps.Me -> Organic Maps -> CoMaps.

So all forks of the same project. Maps.Me is not open source anymore (I think?), and CoMaps was started by a subset of the Organic Maps community that wasn't happy with the Organic Maps governance.

> What might make me switch?

Different reasons for different people, but OpenStreetMap is a great community project, for one. What I really like with those apps (I am now using CoMaps) is that they are open source, offline first and the UI is quite minimal and clean.

Re: Organic Maps

#95

Post by radec »

Is it feasible for something like this to have heatmaps?

Maybe the data could be shared/distributed via hypercore or similar.

I find heatmaps are my primary way of finding new mountain biking trails and routes.

Re: Organic Maps

#96

Post by palata »

dxetech wrote: post #31

I remember over 15 years ago my wife and I were honeymooning in Europe (rom the US). While we had iOS devices that could use maps, the data services then were terrible, and GPS was effectively useless We ended up taking screen shots of Google Maps where we zoomed in on local streets, on an ad hoc type atlas. I wish we had this app back then

At that time I think I was using CityMaps2Go. Not sure if it still exists though.

Re: Organic Maps

#97

Post by cmdoptesc »

dxetech wrote: post #31

I remember over 15 years ago my wife and I were honeymooning in Europe (rom the US). While we had iOS devices that could use maps, the data services then were terrible, and GPS was effectively useless We ended up taking screen shots of Google Maps where we zoomed in on local streets, on an ad hoc type atlas. I wish we had this app back then

I believe MapsWithMe (now Maps.me) was released about that time, but I personally didn't get an iOS device until 2013.

Re: Organic Maps

#98

Post by cryo32 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93
cryo32 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going on holiday is why I work. And I use organic maps when I’m on holiday. And donate. Good luck to them.

> And donate How do you square this with Organic Maps being organised as a for-profit entity?

Same as when I donate money to Apple.

Re: Organic Maps

#99

Post by mamaar »

palata wrote: post #87
mamaar wrote: post #37

There is also https://gitlab.com/tilelessmap/tilelessmap with some of the same focus areas. > TilelessMap is an open, offline-first mapping engine designed for critical field use, such as forestry, emergency services, and humanitarian work. Built with C and optimized for mobile performance, TilelessMap enables full local map rendering without relying on cloud infrastructure — even in areas with poor or no internet co…

I am curious: is it called "tileless" because it uses tiles, but offline? Or does it somehow not use tiles?

There are no tiles. All geometry is loaded and rendered directly from an SQLite database on every render.

Geometry is stored as TWKB (Tiny Well-Known Binary) to reduce storage and transport size. During decoding, they do clever work using aggregate functions and reusing buffers across rows to reduce allocations.

There is real potential in the tech, but unfortunately little momentum behind it.

Re: Organic Maps

#100

Post by david-gpu »

eisa01 wrote: post #4

Organic Maps was my go to app for a navigation app where you can fix errors yourself immediately! So much better than having to work for free on the proprietary apps, and hope they accept your edits There’s a fork from one year ago, CoMaps, that is gaining different features E.g., I am adding CarPlay Dashboard support that you can test by joining the TestFlight We are in great need of both more testers and some prope…

All these apps rely on the data provided by OpenStreetMap (OSM). It is a Wikipedia-like project where anybody can contribute edits.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/

Post reply on HN