A community-led fork of Organic Maps • Hacker News Board

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#51

Post by contrapunctus » Mon, May 12, 2025, 1:48 PM UTC

medfield wrote: post #40

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…

Agreed. I use organic maps for hiking, because its just simple offline trail mapping. I want a mapping program in my car to easily be offline, have map overlays that are easy to read like more pronounced lane/route arrows and can re route if there is a road shut down or a backup on the expressway and I go to get off. But my biggest gripe with using organic maps with driving is its search function. I couldnt care if i…

Are you sure the address actually exists on OpenStreetMap? You can add it with StreetComplete (Android) or Go Map (iOS).

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#52

Post by nicpottier » Mon, May 12, 2025, 1:48 PM UTC

I've contributed a few trivial fixes to OrganicMaps and I found them to be pretty responsive and reasonable in their opinions. That doesn't mean I agreed with all the decisions or priorities they make but that's to be expected. Their leadership seemed sane enough to me. It certainly felt like close enough to a BDFL situation to me.

In the research I did, OrganicMaps was the only viable open alternative to something like Gaia and it wasn't particularly close. It does a pretty good job of that, though their map styles leave some things to be desired and meter only topo lines is a bummer.

My limited experience playing around with the codebase made me appreciate that this isn't a small or simple project. It is a huge mixed codebase of C/Java/etc to share rendering across platforms and even just the map file generation is no small thing.

Color me skeptical that a fork will get off the ground, this seems more likely to me that both projects will struggle for a good while longer. Announcing a fork is easy, delivering something with enough value beyond rhetoric that will draw users over is another.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#53

Post by RetroTechie » Mon, May 12, 2025, 1:51 PM UTC

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.

Option to contribute & offline-first is not mutually exclusive:

Use map data offline, user makes a correction/addition, upload that when app has internet access.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#54

Post by dagw » Mon, May 12, 2025, 1:52 PM UTC

gray_charger wrote: post #30

What's the difference between Organic Maps/this and OSMAnd?

OSMAnd has more advanced features and settings and things you can configure, but at the expense of a nice user friendly out of the box experience. Organic Maps (and thus this project) aimed to produce a more user friendly and streamlined app focusing on usability over lots of features.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#55

Post by kmarc » Mon, May 12, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #47

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…

> Alternative path for your bike route? Forget about it. What do you mean? It's possible to add intermediate stops to shape your route. Or do you mean something else? With you on the search not being forgiving enough.

Other map apps offer different routes between two points, showing the trade-off in time. Organic Maps calculates one route, and it doesn't matter if it's through a deadly car-congested highway.

My example is going from Zürich West to Downtown. Here is my experience:

* Organic maps: calculates fast, although through a street with a lot of traffic, no alternatives offered.

* OsmAnd: takes 5 seconds on a flagship phone to RENDER the current view. I try to avoid zoom and pan. What the hell. Calculating the navigation is either a couple seconds or a minute. The whole UX is totally broken, however, at least you can select to prefer byways / bicycle routes.

* Mapy: fast rendering, fast pathfinding, alternatives offered, configurable to use bike paths.

* Google Maps: totally random what happens, it's a combination of the above (I guess it tries to use live traffic data, too?)

Now the funny thing is that there is an actual signaled bicycle path (which I prefer, since it avoids traffic), and OSM does have this data. None of the app would prefer that path, unfortunately (it's maybe 20 minutes instead of 18 minutes, but much safer).

It feels like most of the apps are hyperfocused on one type of navigation / exploration / feature set (being offline is huge, though), and nothing comes close to Google Maps' "not the best, but delivers alright UX across all these features" approach.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#56

Post by lolinder » Mon, May 12, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #50

lolinder wrote: post #43

I'm increasingly disaffected by the idea of BDFL-run projects. The concept is appealing—it's essentially Plato's philosopher king. The BDFL can unstick decision making and ensure the project moves forward without having to litigate every decision in committee, they maintain context and vision throughout the life of the project, and because they're not accountable to anyone they can make the right call for the project…

You can't fork a country, but you can fork a open source project. Remember to not sign an CLA that gives superpowers to the current BDFL. So it's more like herding cats instead of nuking everyone that decides to ignore the presidencial orders or not paying taxes.

Forks introduce chaos and are sometimes impossible. If WordPress had a different government structure from the beginning Matt would not be in power anymore, but because it's a dictator for life he's still there and the community has decided to put up with him rather than risk the chaos of a fork.

No one is happy about it, but collective action is hard when it's not baked into the system.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#57

Post by shafyy » Mon, May 12, 2025, 2:05 PM UTC

saubeidl wrote: post #34

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…

What do you think is the biggest UX issue with maps.me/organic maps/comaps/whatever?

Not an UX thing, but I find myself going back to Google Maps to find restaurants, reviews and reliable opening hours all the time. Neither Apple Maps nor Organic Maps offers the same level of quality (not to say that Google Maps reviews can be problematic in themselves).

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#58

Post by przmk » Mon, May 12, 2025, 2:05 PM UTC

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?

I mean... Yeah, why not? That's one of the reasons FOSS is nice: people who are willing to maintain/contribute don't have to put up with a project going rogue.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#59

Post by wertik12 » Mon, May 12, 2025, 2:05 PM UTC

throw738384 wrote: post #46

I would add a few points: * Organic Maps devs are from Belarus, company is registered in Estonia. This is very difficult setup already, and I can imagine authors just want simplest setup possible. Perhaps they do not want to waste energy on nonprofit that is very very difficult and expensive to do internationally! * If they sell the company so what? Create another fork and move on. It is opensource, but that does not…

The thing is that there is an ongoing conflict between owners of Organic Maps OU itself. Due to ownership structure this leads to block of development etc for a long time already, so some existing contributors (that are not a part of OM OU business entity) started a fork.

Re: A community-led fork of Organic Maps

#60

Post by neilv » Mon, May 12, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

Something I often wonder about forks, just as good practice...

Is anyone from the Organic Maps and OSM contributor communities familiar with the people forking this, and can vouch for their intentions and the necessity of forking?

How do we get confidence in that?