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Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

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Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#161

Post by bradjonesca »

mourner wrote: post #69
easbar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you comment on how likely similar future license changes are for these libraries? Thanks a lot for your work in the mapping space btw.

I'd say extremely unlikely — it wouldn't make sense both technically (stable, mature, small, razor-focused libraries that are already open source) and business-wise. As far as I know as someone who worked here for 7+ years (take this as personal opinion), Mapbox wants to keep investing heavily in open source and open data sustainably and indefinitely, and this GL JS change is an unevitable prerequisite for that. This…

Congratulations on the V2 release! Does this release set the stage for (extruded) buildings to be "addressable" in 3D? eg. Can you place a marker 5 stories up on a 10 floor building?

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#162

Post by Widdershin »

karussell wrote: post #87
mourner wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7+ years to be exact. It's unfair to call Leaflet dead — it's still quite actively maintained, gets regular releases and has a huge community of both users and contributors, and Mapbox have always been supportive of me spending time on it during work hours. What someone can see as less development activity is simply a sign of a mature product that doesn't need many new features and changes to remain useful — focusing…

Thanks for replying and all your amazing work :) ! What I see or meant as a sign of "dead" is that there will be no new features that Mapbox GL JS has but that are critical for future applications. Like proper or inbuilt vector tiles support.

Reading this comment makes me a bit sad because I wrote a really good incremental tile based renderer for leaflet that could easily be adapted for vector tiles.

Unfortunately that whole business unit got canned and the code is now gathering dust somewhere :/ would have loved to open source that one

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#163

Post by stevage »

tuukkah wrote: post #146
stevage wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the 50k free map loads per month.

1667 free page loads per day is significantly more restricted than the earlier infinite free loads (of non-Mapbox content). Also, they can change the pricing at any time and some uses might suddenly become unfeasible essentially pulling the rug from under your feet (same as happened with Google Maps pricing earlier).

Well, yes, any finite numbers is significantly more restricted than infinity...

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#164

Post by murphy214 »

klokan wrote: post #152
lukeqsee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me that sound like while I can still use my own map tiles, it would still costs the same as if I used Mapbox hosted tiles. That's my reading of it, as well. Even though it's somewhat expected on the data collection side, it's decidedly unexpected that they not only require ToS acceptance, but also licensing fees for what used to be entirely free, OSS software. > Hopefully the OSS community can maintain a fork of…

The https://github.com/openmaptiles/gl-js proposed as the primary shared repo for an open-source fork of the Mapbox GL JS 1.x codebase. Let's set autobuild of documentation, packages and configure CI on pull requests. Pull requests, forks & contributions welcome - as on other parts of the https://openmaptiles.org/ project providing free and open-source vector tiles of entire world for self-hosting.

LOL haven't you guys had enough legal trouble with Mapbox already ;)

In all seriousness I completely agree as someone in the mapping community this seems like a logical home. You have my vote!

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#165

Post by andrewharvey »

tmcw wrote: post #104
themakermark wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear why. I have no problem with companies choosing not to open source in the first place, it is just the idea of taking an open source project with an active community around it and closing it up that is a tough pill to swallow.

I won't get into all the context, but I think we should consider whether a community without contributors is a community. GL JS never had major active contributors outside of the company, and there are no self-funded webgl experts with lots of time who are ready to maintain a fork. OSS, we hoped, was about enabling people and unlocking people's ability to collaborate. It turns out that in 2020, it's mostly helping co…

I'm one of the more frequent non-Mapbox contributors to the project. I've made a lot of PRs over the years and I try to help out with reviewing PRs and to triage incoming issues.

While I agree there has been non-trivial contributions external to the core of gl js (eg. bindings, plugins), and these help the ecosystem, they don't replace work on the core.

Personally I'd hoped that those businesses who were using GL JS commercially without a commercial subscription through Mapbox would contribute and become part of the core development and maintenance, but that didn't happen to a large degree.

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#166

Post by [deleted] »

klokan wrote: post #152
lukeqsee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me that sound like while I can still use my own map tiles, it would still costs the same as if I used Mapbox hosted tiles. That's my reading of it, as well. Even though it's somewhat expected on the data collection side, it's decidedly unexpected that they not only require ToS acceptance, but also licensing fees for what used to be entirely free, OSS software. > Hopefully the OSS community can maintain a fork of…

The https://github.com/openmaptiles/gl-js proposed as the primary shared repo for an open-source fork of the Mapbox GL JS 1.x codebase. Let's set autobuild of documentation, packages and configure CI on pull requests. Pull requests, forks & contributions welcome - as on other parts of the https://openmaptiles.org/ project providing free and open-source vector tiles of entire world for self-hosting.

[deleted]

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#167

Post by harrisonjackson »

juliansimioni wrote: post #137
harrisonjackson wrote: post #47

We tried to implement mapbox on a new product last week. I like the style options for the maps but their reverse geo lookup and local search performed poorly vs google maps. Pins dropped down the street from actual address and search results don't narrow in accurately using POI and city/state - for example "Chipotle Parker Colorado" rather than showing the 3 chipotles in Parker, CO lists: - the city "Parker, CO" - Pa…

Try us out at Geocode Earth! ( https://geocode.earth ) We wrote and maintain the open-source Pelias geocoder( https://github.com/pelias/pelias ) at Mapzen and have been continuing to improve it in the 3 years since Mapzen's shutdown. Geocode Earth is our hosted service built around Pelias so you can get started quickly, not worry about keeping data up to date, or doing all the fine tuning and optimization that we've…

Nice - tested a bunch of the ones we were benchmarking against and they all worked well!

We will keep you in mind as our usage grows or if we have another project. Your tiered pricing doesn't make sense for us as we launch.

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#168

Post by everybodyknows »

zylepe wrote: post #39
lukeqsee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founder, Stadia Maps here. We're looking into this, as well as trying to build consensus with the other map vendors on how to approach it. If you're a vendor and what to be part of it, email me (luke at stadiamaps.com).

Glad to see this. I’m a long time mapbox gl js user for https://onthegomap.com which costs $300-400 per month for running my own graphhopper routing servers and Stadia Maps tile hosting. It would cost over $3000 per month to upgrade to 2.0 and I have no need for 3D. I also use mapbox gl js for visualizing large datasets locally (precomoute vector tiles from non-geographic datasets), which doesn’t seems like it needs…

Any plans for monetization you can share? $300-400 per month seems an expensive gift to the public ...

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#169

Post by webmaven »

Widdershin wrote: post #162
karussell wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for replying and all your amazing work :) ! What I see or meant as a sign of "dead" is that there will be no new features that Mapbox GL JS has but that are critical for future applications. Like proper or inbuilt vector tiles support.

Reading this comment makes me a bit sad because I wrote a really good incremental tile based renderer for leaflet that could easily be adapted for vector tiles. Unfortunately that whole business unit got canned and the code is now gathering dust somewhere :/ would have loved to open source that one

> Unfortunately that whole business unit got canned and the code is now gathering dust somewhere :/ would have loved to open source that one

I'd encourage you to reach out and ask for permission to release it. In the past I've found that the sticking point was usually copyright assignment rather than the release per-se (with a side helping of worry over hidden IP violations), so get them to release a tarball under a permissive license like MIT/BSD, even if your intention is to immediately fork it.

Basically, if you can manage to do the work for them so they can just rubber stamp the release, you can probably get it done.

Re: Mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license

#170

Post by nyuriks »

I have proposed MapLibre as a new home, unaffiliated with any existing project, but at the same time inviting maintainers from everywhere, including OpenMapTiles (I'm a big contributor there), as well as other entities. So far a lot of positive response on twitter, hopefully it will pick up. See original post at https://twitter.com/nyuriks/status/1336493514646052864 (includes a nice reply from MapBox CEO)
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