MapLibre GL is a free and open-source fork of mapbox-gl-JS

https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-gl-js

by atriix • 5 years ago

264 29 5 years ago

github.com

rijoja2• 5 years ago

Cool does anyone have experience of using this?

genericguy3• 5 years ago

We are using it at couchers.org. It's a drop-in replacement to the 1.x versions which were properly open source.

rijoja2• 5 years ago

Wow that is cool, good to see a couch surfing alternative. Have you gotten a decent amount of users?

nxpnsv2• 5 years ago

I wanted to try this, it so I opened the demo https://codepen.io/klokan/pen/WNoZRyx and 30 mins later I am lost looking at Hungarian villages for some reason...

fit2rule• 5 years ago

Hungarian villages are fascinating. Are you tuning into something, in particular, about them? (For me, its the village sun alignments/road-parallelism that fascinates..)

nxpnsv2• 5 years ago

I was following the Austrian border, in places it is hilariously convoluted, assuming it follows meandering rivers - the effect on fields and contrast to straight villages is fun...

eCa• 5 years ago

Have you tried Geoguessr[1]?

[1] https://www.geoguessr.com/ (no affiliation)

slibhb• 5 years ago

From https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js

Mapbox gl-js version 2.0 or higher (“Mapbox Web SDK”) must be used according to the Mapbox Terms of Service. This license allows developers with a current active Mapbox account to use and modify the Mapbox Web SDK. Developers may modify the Mapbox Web SDK code so long as the modifications do not change or interfere with marked portions of the code related to billing, accounting, and anonymized data collection. The Mapbox Web SDK only sends anonymized usage data, which Mapbox uses for fixing bugs and errors, accounting, and generating aggregated anonymized statistics. This license terminates automatically if a user no longer has an active Mapbox account.

Seems their client code does some things related to "billing, accounting, and anonymized data collection" and they don't want programmers to disable or modify that code.

Is that right? Anyone who has followed this have more information? I haven't used mapbox in a few years but I think it's great technology.

mourner• 5 years ago

There was a big HN discussion about it a few months back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25347310

gregsadetsky• 5 years ago

I feel like this discussion about Amazon Location Service is also relevant for anyone interested -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25444615

blendergeek2• 5 years ago

The billing is pretty important.

Using Mapbox GL JS 2.0 offline using a local tile server still requires an account and a per tile fee.

lights0123• 5 years ago

per tile fee

Per map load fee

Freak_NL• 5 years ago

The software stopped being open source from v2 onwards. The new licence makes it merely shared source.

This GitHub issue where this change is announced provides a number of more in-depth explanations why this is a bad thing for most users of the software: https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/10162

icholy• 5 years ago

How does this compare with openlayers?

Waterluvian2• 5 years ago

Last time I tried, Mapbox is very primitive as a GIS front end but fine as a basic Web mapping UI.

I find that Openlayers has more of the capabilities I need when building complex mapping UIs.

executive• 5 years ago

Exactly the opposite experience.

Openlayers Web GL suppot is rudimentary.

Doctor_Fegg• 5 years ago

Mapbox GL/MapLibre GL does one thing and does it incredibly well: vector map rendering from tiled data (MVT format) in the common Web Mercator projection.

OpenLayers is a bit more of a Swiss Army knife. It's a valuable part of many web GIS workflows, but its vector tile rendering is a long way behind MBGL's.

schoenobates• 5 years ago

I've tried very recently with Openlayers and their OL-Mapbox style package[0] - it wasn't too bad TBH, but not great.

Maplibre is still very nascent and needs a lot of work until it is ready to be used in anger. I do wonder if it would be better to put effort into Openlayers rather than trying to maintain this library - as others have pointed out, OL provides so much more.

[0] https://github.com/openlayers/ol-mapbox-style

cejana• 5 years ago

Besides the JS version, the Maplibre project also maintains a FOSS fork of the matching mobile libraries at https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-gl-native

vami• 5 years ago

The story behind Mapbox GL: https://www.maptiler.com/news/2021/01/mapbox-gl-open-source-...

dnndev2• 5 years ago

How does this compare to cesiumjs? https://github.com/CesiumGS/cesium

dagw• 5 years ago

Mapbox is first and foremost a 2D mapping tool that can do some limited 3D. Cesium is first and foremost a 3D mapping tool that can do some limited 2D.

Also while the Cesium core remains Open Source more and more of the tools and extras needed to make something really useful are starting to require expensive licenses.

dnndev2• 5 years ago

Thank you! This was very helpful as we are focusing on 3D.

MapLibre GL is a free and open-source fork of mapbox-gl-JS

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