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A community-led fork of Organic Maps

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Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#101

Post by PufPufPuf »

kmarc wrote: post #32

Sad to see the current state of mobile OSM-based apps. Maps.me becoming OrganicMaps, now this. Lot of development effort, great work going into it, but somehow, after years, the apps don't feel more user-friendly. I was pushing hard to replace Google Maps, but eventually, I gave up. OsmAnd is great if you need that "swiss army knife of OSM apps" on your phone, but I rarely do. Same with Maps.me/Organic Maps, try to s…

I'm Czech, and a long time user of Mapy.cz / Mapy.com. Monetization of Mapy.com has been a question for some time. It's part of the Seznam conglomerate, which makes most of its money through various news sites (including a TV channel) and an ad platform. Other "side projects" of Seznam, like their e-mail service, serve as drivers for their homepage and stay completely free. Mapy.cz contained affiliate Booking.com links for some time, but recently they added a paid subscription and moved the ability to download offline maps for more than two countries at a time behind a paywall. It seems that they are just now trying to figure out a more sustainable way to monetize, and everyone is hoping they won't destroy the great app in the process.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#102

Post by rafram »

kmarc wrote: post #32

Sad to see the current state of mobile OSM-based apps. Maps.me becoming OrganicMaps, now this. Lot of development effort, great work going into it, but somehow, after years, the apps don't feel more user-friendly. I was pushing hard to replace Google Maps, but eventually, I gave up. OsmAnd is great if you need that "swiss army knife of OSM apps" on your phone, but I rarely do. Same with Maps.me/Organic Maps, try to s…

I'm not that worried about Mapy.cz/.com becoming useless unless you pay, to be honest. (Maybe they'll make me look foolish for that.) The developer is Seznam, which is kind of like the Czech homegrown equivalent of Google/Craigslist/Zillow. I assume they monetize in pretty much the same way: ads, enterprise, API fees.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#103

Post by Stephen304 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #86

The concern seems to be they want a bunch of guarantees about what will be done with the project - not because there is a change happening from Organic, but because they're afraid of a change happening in the future . If such a change happens in the future, they can fork then. I mean, hell, this already happened; they had Maps.ME, it was sold, Roman forked it to Organic. If it gets sold again they can fork again. Thi…

> If such a change happens in the future, they can fork then...

Did such a change not already happen with the addition of Kayak affiliate links without any community consultation? It seems to me that there has already been enough to justify a fork.

Not to mention, there was a promise of electing and changing boardmembers which has never happened, and hiding the use of OrganicMaps project donations for personal vacations as alleged by the initial open letter.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#104

Post by red_trumpet »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #86

The concern seems to be they want a bunch of guarantees about what will be done with the project - not because there is a change happening from Organic, but because they're afraid of a change happening in the future . If such a change happens in the future, they can fork then. I mean, hell, this already happened; they had Maps.ME, it was sold, Roman forked it to Organic. If it gets sold again they can fork again. Thi…

There seems to be a bit of drama about part of the server software being closed source: https://github.com/orgs/organicmaps/discussions/9837

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#105

Post by soperj »

saubeidl wrote: post #28

Again? Wasn't the whole thing about Organic Maps to be a community-led fork of maps.me? So now we're at a fork of a fork?

Neovim is a fork of VIM which was a fork of Stevie which was a fork of vi which was a fork of ed, and it's the piece of software I use probably more than anything.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#106

Post by rafram »

Stephen304 wrote: post #103
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #86

The concern seems to be they want a bunch of guarantees about what will be done with the project - not because there is a change happening from Organic, but because they're afraid of a change happening in the future . If such a change happens in the future, they can fork then. I mean, hell, this already happened; they had Maps.ME, it was sold, Roman forked it to Organic. If it gets sold again they can fork again. Thi…

> If such a change happens in the future, they can fork then... Did such a change not already happen with the addition of Kayak affiliate links without any community consultation? It seems to me that there has already been enough to justify a fork. Not to mention, there was a promise of electing and changing boardmembers which has never happened, and hiding the use of OrganicMaps project donations for personal vacati…

> hiding the use of OrganicMaps project donations for personal vacations as alleged by the initial open letter

Were those donations intended to support the core developers generally? Or were they specifically intended to pay for servers, equipment, etc.?

If it’s the former, a vacation seems like a totally legitimate use. If the latter, not so much.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#107

Post by gorfian_robot »

_fat_santa wrote: post #83
karussell wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSMAnd and OrganicMaps both have the limitation (and big advantage) of functioning offline by default. The routing will be much more powerful (with alternatives on by default) and faster if you enable an online routing service. For OSMAnd this is possible with e.g. GraphHopper: https://www.graphhopper.com/blog/2024/02/27/osmand-with-grap... The same is true for address search. If you have an online address search lik…

> (and big advantage) of functioning offline by default. I don't know about others but that's the main reason I use it. My day to day mapping app is still Google Maps but I always keep a copy of Organic Maps with downloaded maps of wherever I'm going as a backup. While I do not use it often, it's gotten me out of a couple of sticky situations while camping and roadtripping. Organic Maps (and other offline mapping pro…

same same. and I often find Organic Maps has hiking trails etc fairly well indicated where Google does not (even if I have cell service)

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#108

Post by ihatehn »

onnimonni wrote: post #70
kmarc wrote: post #32

Sad to see the current state of mobile OSM-based apps. Maps.me becoming OrganicMaps, now this. Lot of development effort, great work going into it, but somehow, after years, the apps don't feel more user-friendly. I was pushing hard to replace Google Maps, but eventually, I gave up. OsmAnd is great if you need that "swiss army knife of OSM apps" on your phone, but I rarely do. Same with Maps.me/Organic Maps, try to s…

Wow, thanks for mentioning https://streetcomplete.app ! This looks very intuitive to use for edits on openstreetmaps. Would someone here know a similiar tool for iOS or MacOS? Or any recommendations to edit roads. We are currently driving with a 4.5 tonne motorhome in Europe and the road weight and height limits are usually marked properly in osmand+ but when they are not we waste multiple hours rerouting in the alps…

Go Map, or just make bookmarks in OsmAnd and go back later

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#109

Post by ihatehn »

kmarc wrote: post #44
maelito wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If OsmAnd got a new rendering engine (no, not that "3D" sluggish thing it has for a couple years now), like streetcomplete has (or the Strava-built-in mapbox renderer), it would be possibly the best. What "3D sluggish thing" are talking about ? Streetcomplete, like most OSM vector 3D maps use MapLibre, for a few months now https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/pull/5693 Edit : sorry, I read Organic. Inde…

Yes :-) Streetcomplete is amazing; I understand it provides less polygons to render but it does an absolutely amazing job at it, even when there are thousands of quests.

It also uses online tiles afaik.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#110

Post by ihatehn »

maelito wrote: post #24
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.

OSM-the-database needs a general public app where contribution is possible to finally be popular. Organic was seen by many as this app, despite its specific choices like being offline. Contributing to this app is hence very important for OSM to exist given Google & Apple Maps.

FYI the OSM foundation will probably always be reluctant to sponsor or appear to prefer a certain end-user app. I don't know exactly why, but they really do see themselves as a vendor agnostic database, and don't want to make a popular website or mobile app that actually gets traction any time soon.

But yes I agree with you.

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