A community-led fork of Organic Maps

https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-05-12/3/

by maelito • 1 year ago

332 194 1 year ago

ano-ther• 1 year ago

What’s the backstory?

There was no real progress in negotiations with Organic Maps shareholders.
It appears that Viktor is only open to a guarantee not to sell the project, however besides that he wants to retain full control of Organic Maps.
And Organic Maps future is uncertain still, as the disagreement between shareholders (Viktor and Roman) has not been resolved.

matteason• 1 year ago

Looks like this is the backstory: https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/

netbioserror• 1 year ago

I'm more partial to a BDFL than a committee, so I'm not sure why I'd prefer this fork. Community management is not a de facto improvement.

protimewaster• 1 year ago

It sounds like the problem is that they don't trust the BDFL to be B, since they're asking for more financial transparency and a bunch of other stuff.

johannes12343214• 1 year ago

BDFL is a good concept. As long as money stays out of it. If the DFL collects money in a for profit Organisation and isn't transparent about usage, this is unsatisfactory to other contributors.

I am not sure there is a huge market for selling the company, though, given the track record of the owners for taking the money and then forking away and trying to pull the users over.

lolinder5• 1 year ago

I'd have agreed with you a year ago, but the WordPress debacle shows that the BDFL concept really hangs on the "benevolent" part of the job description. If your BDFL goes rancid your only option is to fork, and hostile forks are very difficult to pull off because it almost invariably forks the community.

The BDFL archetype is basically Plato's philosopher king. It's a nice and appealing idea in theory, and works well if you get a good one (Matz for Ruby, by all accounts). But it's risky, and it's hard to be sure yours is actually benevolent and will stay benevolent.

ChrisMarshallNY• 1 year ago

I could have been a BDFL for a project that I authored, but chose against that.

I often say that the best thing that I ever did for the project, was walk away from it. The team that took it over, has made it extremely successful.

fsflover• 1 year ago

conception• 1 year ago

Site still prompts to install organic maps app on mobile.

HelloUsername• 1 year ago

Indeed no working download buttons on https://www.comaps.app/download/

Ndymium• 1 year ago

It's mentioned in their code forge[0] that they're working on getting the first release out. So there's not yet anything to download.

[0] https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps

will-bradley10• 1 year ago

The "updates" link is for news and the "download" page has buttons that are inactive, are you seeing anything "Organic" remaining on the site? We've been trying to clean things up but may have missed something.

sam_lowry_• 1 year ago

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.

Freak_NL2• 1 year ago

Do you mean 'contribute' or 'donate'? Contributing fixes, bug reports, and code to FOSS projects using OpenStreetMap data makes sense to me, if they do something you appreciate.

SamWhited• 1 year ago

Organic Maps is a way to distribute OSM data, but it also has a lot more than just the OSM maps it uses (code to curate and collect those maps into downloadable packs, code to display them, code to do routing, design assets and resources for the app, documentation, etc.)

You're correct that the maps are OSM though, you can always contribute to OSM and that will also help Organic Maps (or whatever new community based map project comes out!)

bondarchuk3• 1 year ago

You cannot use OSM by itself for gps navigation on your phone, right?

margalabargala• 1 year ago

OSMand works fine for navigation and has for a decade.

palata10• 1 year ago

OSM is the database containing all the data. Navigation is not exactly "data" that is stored in a database, it's the result of computing a path between two locations based on the data stored in OSM.

Maybe a comparison would be this: if you want to hike somewhere the "old school" way, with a compass and a paper map. You will buy a paper map made by someone else, you will localise yourself on this map, and then you will trace a path between where you are and where you want to go. As you hike, you will update your location on the map (by using e.g. your compass) and choose your next steps accordingly.

In this example, the paper map is not doing any navigation. It doesn't know what GPS is, it doesn't have a compass. It's just map data printed on paper. You are the one making the navigation, right?

- OSM is the paper map.

- Organic Maps, or OSMAnd, or whatever app you use as a frontend to OSM is "the navigator" (you).

Does that help?

maelito8• 1 year ago

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.

RetroTechie4• 1 year ago

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.

ihatehn6• 1 year ago

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.

RetroTechie4• 1 year ago

You need both: the map data (OSM project), and software for viewing/using it.

Ideally any app using OSM data would enable contributing to the underlaying map data. But that's probably not how it works.

For what it's worth: I like Organic Maps for being more lightweight, quicker rendering & simpler configuration than OSMand. But it (still? haven't used in a while) does lack some useful features like points of interest (supermarkets, gas stations & such).

Would be nice if it were easy to share (offline) map data between apps. Download in app A, backup on sd card , use from app B, C, D, or on other device by swap/copy sd card. Maybe it's possible, but I haven't figured out how (on Android). At least it's not easy/obvious/automatic.

pbmonster• 1 year ago

Would be nice if it were easy to share (offline) map data between apps. Download in app A, backup on sd card , use from app B, C, D, or on other device by swap/copy sd card. Maybe it's possible, but I haven't figured out how (on Android).

I'm also really hoping for that. Some kind of local OSM map server that all apps in the ecosystem call to provide geodata.

I run OSMand, StreetComplete, Organic Maps and Magic Earth on my phone. I need all of them to download the exact same geo data. And for convenience reasons, I usually load entire countries. It's so annoying having to download a country in app #3...

et-al2• 1 year ago

For what it's worth: I like Organic Maps for being more lightweight, quicker rendering & simpler configuration than OSMand. But it (still? haven't used in a while) does lack some useful features like points of interest (supermarkets, gas stations & such).

Am I misinterpreting something? This is because of the underlying OSM data. So one should add these places to OSM so downstream apps will show the places you want, right?

matkoniecz3• 1 year ago

I always assumed that Organic Maps was a sophisticated way to distribute OSM data, nothing more.

sophisticated way to distribute OSM data also needs development efforts

this is not an easy or trivial project

there are also numerous other FOSS projects in OSM ecosystem

mapping itself and improving map data is also very welcome, obviously!

RetroTechie4• 1 year ago

Sad how much good stuff gets destroyed by non-benevolent dictators and/or greed.

Let's hope a community-led fork does so well that OM becomes a footnote in history. Or it causes OM owners to make a U-turn (but who cares @ this point. Just go ahead with community-led effort).

Would need a new name though. How about a public-is-invited contest?

Freak_NL2• 1 year ago

Would need a new name though. How about a public-is-invited contest?

Like the one linked to in the article?

https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/issues/34

shark1• 1 year ago

OrganicMaps is such a great app. I did not know it was owned by this type of organisation. I hope they sort it out.

ForHackernews• 1 year ago

Wait, what, again? I thought Organic Maps was the "good"/BDFL-led/actually open fork of Maps.me that was bought and turned into malware?

matkoniecz3• 1 year ago

Yes, it is fork of a fork.

saubeidl4• 1 year ago

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?

przmk• 1 year ago

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.

boramalper• 1 year ago

So now we're at a fork of a fork?

This history is full of such "forks of forks" (whatever you're trying to imply with that):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix#/media/File:Un...

saubeidl4• 1 year ago

I'm not trying to imply anything with that other than that it seems the original fork seems to have failed in its stated goals of being the community-led, non-commercialized version.

PaulDavisThe1st4• 1 year ago

  There is a Smile of Love 
  And there is a Smile of Deceit 
  And there is a Smile of Smiles
  In which these two Smiles meet 

  And there is a Frown of Hate 
  And there is a Frown of disdain 
  And there is a Frown of Frowns
  Which you strive to forget in vain 

  -- William Blake, The Smile of Smiles

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47468/the-smile

soperj3• 1 year ago

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.

andrewshadura• 1 year ago

Vim was not a fork, neither were other things on your list apart from neovim.

gitaarik• 1 year ago

Stevie?

kupopuffs• 1 year ago

oh boy wait until he hears about biology

whorleater• 1 year ago

A fork of a fork I guess, Organic Maps was originally `maps.me`, and I suppose we're forking it again

palata10• 1 year ago

Yep... but I don't see it as a problem. Maybe CoMaps become the new thing, maybe Organic Maps changes and stays...

The very fact that a fork can be made is good for the users. It doesn't mean that users have to follow the latest fork, though.

gray_charger• 1 year ago

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

dagw• 1 year ago

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.

atkirtland• 1 year ago

The thing that keeps on Organic Maps instead of OSMAnd is how slow it is.

kmarc11• 1 year ago

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 search for something, mistype only one letter (surprise, surprise, that happens a lot on mobile), and you have no chance to get results. Alternative path for your bike route? Forget about it. Rendering is awful, either ugly, or slow, or both.

I am trying to switch to Mapy.com (Mapy.cz before), it's a surprisingly user friendly app, however, not sure how they are going to monetize soon. So far the best on phone, I hope they will push and really become a Maps-replacement. They recently switched from a Czech-focused concept to a proper world-wide map (mapy.com); both web and mobile is great so far. (I am not Czech, and have no relation to mapy, simply really like their app)

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.

saubeidl4• 1 year ago

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

kmarc11• 1 year ago

The biggest for me is definitely the lack of public transportation. This is something even gnome-maps support. Global search (eg. things that are not downloaded yet) only works for some bigger entities, that are part of the world map (although I understand that this would need some server-side support). Not having a satellite map is also a bummer.

Point-to-point navigation at places where you already downloaded maps is alright (same with osmand), but for exploration, or public trasnport, I would need to use moovit, mapy, osmand (wikipedia overlay is awesome), or google maps.

shafyy• 1 year ago

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).

ravenstine• 1 year ago

Search. I've wanted to like Organic Maps, but the search function is the absolute pits and forces me to still use Google Maps. Without good search, there's next to no point in me using it.

maelito8• 1 year ago

try to search for something, mistype only one letter

Photon is quite good at this, coming with english/french/german plug-and-play. But it's online, so very hard to implement on each user's phone, which is the limitation of Organic and Osmand.

Once you're using Photon or an equivalent project, you need to do a lot more to provide Google's experience : - itinerary suggestions like "from london to winchester" - coordinates detection - handle abbreviations like blvd, in all the languages (Nominatim does it better than Photon, from what I know) - handle category search, e.g. typing "coffee in Marais" -> a full-text-search won't work taking only the features' name, you need to do some semantic separation of terms - etc.

Alternative path for your bike route? Forget about it.

Same pb : offline routing is harder. BRouter is excellent, with lots of alternatives, but online (can be installed on OSMand but it's nerdy).

Disclaimer : I'm working on https://cartes.app, a Web map app. We're using Photon and Brouter, but lots need to be done, including i18n to english, soon I hope !

kmarc11• 1 year ago

this looks promising, thanks for sharing :-)

maelito8• 1 year ago

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. Indeed OSMand is sluggish for me as well. I don't know why they went for something other than MapLibre. It's probably in-house and entangled in their code :/

kmarc11• 1 year ago

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.

palata10• 1 year ago

I don't know why they went for something other than MapLibre.

OSMAnd existed looong before MapLibre :-).

medfield• 1 year ago

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 it doesnt have all the online social features like google maps and come up with the police/safety warnings and restaurant ratings. I just want its seach to actually find the place I want to go.

Most of the time I try and avoid using google maps, but then I go back and try organic maps. Notice it doesnt have where i want to go listed in its search, so i google the address to plug in. I can enter in the exact address and it wont find it and then go back to google maps.

contrapunctus• 1 year ago

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

jacekm• 1 year ago

map overlays that are easy to read like more pronounced lane/route arrows

Try Magic Earth https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.generalmag...

palata10• 1 year ago

Notice it doesnt have where i want to go listed in its search

I live in an area where OSM is really good with that (just because people contributed the data). If your area is less complete, it feels like it's a good opportunity to contribute!

There are many apps that will help you contribute to the map, or you can do it directly from the website: https://www.openstreetmap.org.

It doesn't mean you need to spend tons of time on it: I contribute data a few times a year. It's better than nothing :-).

jraph6• 1 year ago

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.

kmarc11• 1 year ago

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.

mongol• 1 year ago

For Android, I have used Locus Maps for many years. It has a somewhat confusing, but very powerful, interface. And I feel the team behind it is committed and engaged. Very worthwhile to try if you haven't.

yread• 1 year ago

I am trying to switch to Mapy.com (Mapy.cz before), it's a surprisingly user friendly app, however, not sure how they are going to monetize soon

They now sell premium. Presumably some features (offline maps? or offline navigation? suggest a hike?) will be locked behind premium :-/ They do have great UX though

onnimonni3• 1 year ago

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 and I would really want to help the next person in similar situation.

kawsper• 1 year ago

There’s been work put in to making this happen, but now EU have also given funding for it to making it Multiplatform: https://nlnet.nl/project/StreetComplete-multiplatform/

jraph6• 1 year ago

Mentioning it just in case, but openstreetmap.org's web editor (iD) is a good start on Desktop.

There's also EveryDoor [1] which is very nice to edit OSM and they do seem to have an iOS version. Depending on what you want to edit, it can be very handy.

I have not tried the numerous other, more advanced options [2].

[1] https://every-door.app/

[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors

ihatehn6• 1 year ago

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

karussell2• 1 year ago

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 like photon the search can be more user friendly. We've put together photon and GraphHopper routing on GraphHopper Maps: https://graphhopper.com/maps/ which you could self-host on your own (i.e. also use offline): https://github.com/karussell/local-maps

GraphHopper Maps is also available on fdroid store or you can install the website as PWA in iOS.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of GraphHopper.

_fat_santa2• 1 year ago

(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 providers) are far from perfect and the UX is just not the same as it is on Google Maps for example. But with it being a backup app, if I need to open it I don't really care about the limitations, I just need an offline map.

mcv• 1 year ago

Offline navigation is really nice. The fact that I can use maps and find routes regardless of where I am and what connection I have, is great.

It would be nice to have slightly smarter search, though. That definitely requires improvement. Even just the ordering of the results is terrible sometimes.

kmarc11• 1 year ago

Thanks for the input.

I happened to work for a car navigation software development company 15+y ago. Cool stuff, Windows CE / PDAs as devices, android and ios nowhere. These were totally offline devices (map updates through usb / sdcard).

Even then, this offline navigation was super fast, across countries. Today I managed to wait a whole minute for a 5km bike navigation in OsmAnd. Then I uninstalled (after years of hoping for improvement. Yes, I was regularly donating money.)

tomsmeding2• 1 year ago

The routing will be much more powerful (with alternatives on by default) and faster if you enable an online routing service.

What is the essential reason that online routing has an advantage over local routing, if the data is all available locally anyway? Is it that you need an index, and that index is large and/or very time-consuming to produce, and hence not viable to store/generate on-device after each map data update?

danhor• 1 year ago

At least for bycicle routing, Brouter also runs offline and is much more performant than both OSMAnd and OrganicMaps (and can be integrated into OSMAnd).

To me it feels like OSMAnd heavily prioritizes feature develompent over performance, which is fair enough but still annoying.

agile-gift0262• 1 year ago

Another alternative to mapy.com you could try is Here WeGo. I prefer it to any other Google Maps alternative I have tried. And there are some things, like the car navigation, that I prefer on it over Google Maps. I don't find their privacy policy creepy, and the most creepy parts are opt-in and the toggle clearly explains what you'd be opting into and what feature you are missing out on by not opting in. Mapy's privacy policy is less creepy than Here's in some aspects, but some of the creepiness that's opt-in in Here, like location data sharing for traffic, it's on with no opting-out on Mapy.

I'd prefer an open-source alternative, but as you said, there isn't any that currently fits my needs.

benrutter• 1 year ago

Plus one for everything you said! I've been using WeGo in place of Google maps for a good few months and it's been an easy drop in swap without any compromises for me.

It would be immense for an open source project to exist, but I'll happily settle for a non-google one.

mnmalst2• 1 year ago

I started using osmand a lot more lately while biking and I agree route calculation on the phone (hi Pixel 4a :) ) are super slow but for that reason you can configure alternative (online) routing engines in the settings https://osmand.net/docs/user/navigation/routing/online-routi.... I use https://openrouteservice.org/ which generates long routes in seconds and works great in general.

PufPufPuf2• 1 year ago

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.

throw7383843• 1 year ago

Mapy.cz was profitable before, they have practical monopoly on Czech market due shop data (opening hours, menus, user reviews). Recent monetization is just squeeze.

Btw hiking data are a bit obsolete for other countries. They have fork from OSM that is a few years behind.

rafram2• 1 year ago

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.

aembleton• 1 year ago

They're monetising by requiring payment to download maps for more than one country at a time.

pbsurf• 1 year ago

I'm working on https://github.com/styluslabs/maps/ including a new 3D map engine (based on Tangram-ES) and JS plugin support, so while there is no offline routing yet, support for additional online routing services can be added by users.

JCattheATM2• 1 year ago

I've been using a do-googled LineagoOS fan for the last few months with Organic maps, and not only do I find it super user friendly, I actively like it more than Google Maps. It works offline so much better.

onnimonni3• 1 year ago

Slightly off topic but I would really want to see DuckDB based alternative of https://pgrouting.org.

It's so easy to embed duckdb anywhere. Current smartphones already have enough CPU juice to handle almost anything and duckdb can query and cache geoparquet files eg from the Overture maps.

will-bradley10• 1 year ago

There's a lot of discussion about bicycle routing improvements, as well as displaying alternate routes. I expect these conversations to be continued in CoMaps, so your input is valued and welcome there! https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/9748

lolinder5• 1 year ago

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 rather than having to make complicated political trade-offs. It's all the perks of a monarchy.

Unfortunately, we've seen over and over again that the BDFL model also has all the problems of monarchy. If you get a good one it's the most effective form of government, but people are fickle things. Frequently we see things like this, where the BDFL turns out to have been malevolent after all or decided that they are the project and are entitled to the sole profit from it. WordPress comes to mind.

A good BDFL is worth keeping, but I think we'll find that drawing inspiration for our community structures from real-world democracies/republics will be more stable and reliable in the long term and more generalizable across new projects. Democracies aren't perfect, but by design they smooth out the variance of the individual humans in the community, giving you much more predictable results over time than monarchies do.

gus_massa• 1 year ago

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.

lolinder5• 1 year ago

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.

0xbadcafebee2• 1 year ago

Worth noting the distinction between a BDFL-project and a community project.

A community project's aim is loosey-goosey. The mission, values, governance, ownership/control, etc can change. While there is input from the community, they are often led by one or two dominant personalities. The project can often be pressured into making changes that are actually worse, or don't reflect the views of a collective of contributors and users. (I don't personally know of any community projects that are required to do what a majority opinion from the community asks for. In this sense it is more like a typical "democratic" government where a few powerful leaders are really in charge, rather than "the masses")

A BDFL project is, by definition, one person's project. There is no secret agenda, because there's no need for it to be secret. There's no pressure from anyone, the project just does what the leader wants. This means there usually isn't "controversy" because if you don't like it you can lump it.

Organic Maps is, apparently, not a BDFL project. It is a project represented by a corporation with 3 shareholders: Roman (project founder), Viktor, and Alexander (who is not a shareholder but Viktor supposedly holds his share). The concern in this case is that since it's not a BDFL project, the contributors don't know wtf is going to happen when the shareholders disagree and the "majority" decides to sell the company or something. If it were a BDFL project, the owner could still decide to sell it, but in this case, the project founder actually is on the side of the community.

Personally I'm not aware of true BDFL projects working against the aims of its own community, and BDFLs don't really change what they do. The exception is when money is involved. If somebody's just getting paid to write open source, the project is safe; if somebody's selling the project as a Product, beware. "Money is a motive with a universal adaptor on it."

RetroTechie4• 1 year ago

A community project's aim is loosey-goosey. The mission, values, governance, ownership/control, etc can change. While there is input from the community, they are often led by one or two dominant personalities.

Project direction can change in any case. Even against user's wishes.

The difference: in a community-led project, it's usually >1 person at the helm. And those leaders can put themselves at risk of being replaced by their community. Which at least puts a cap on how much they can push through their own decisions.

A benevolent dictator doesn't have this problem. And therefore can move easier.

But it's a fine line, and very easy to run foul of the "benevolent" part @ some point. Few DFLs manage this long-term.

Not to mention that over time, a community's desired project direction may simple diverge from project leader's vision. Pet project with a handful like-minded contributors != big project with many users & contributors.

throw7383843• 1 year ago

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 mean authors can not get some money!

* Biggest expense for Organic Maps is hosting and mirroring map data. Is this fork going to use (and pay) their own servers?

* Is there list of developers and contributors behind this fork? I only found "us" and "we" and "community"!

wertik12• 1 year ago

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.

palata10• 1 year ago

If they sell the company so what? Create another fork and move on. It is opensource, but that does not mean authors can not get some money!

Sure, but I think this is what's happening now. Not because they are selling the company, but apparently one issue is that nobody in the community knows where the donations are going.

They (CoMaps) complain about transparency regarding finances. I believe this would be a good reason to fork.

throw7383843• 1 year ago

Donations are going to Organic Maps company. They have 10+ years of history. Most likely to pay for map server traffic.

Non-profit does not guarantee transparency, look at Mozilla as an example.

This fork is just a bunch of anonymous dudes on internet, who setup PayPal and replaced donate button. Until they do map data hosting, there is not much credibility!

Edit: there are 3th party mirrors for manual download, so I guess they can use those.

ihatehn6• 1 year ago

Hi biodranik! Hope you're well.

nicpottier• 1 year ago

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.

palata10• 1 year ago

Color me skeptical that a fork will get off the ground

Could be, time will tell us. But it works as expected: people can fork if they want to, users can choose which app they use. Users can even use both OrganicMaps and CoMaps if that's better for them!

I currently use OrganicMaps and OSMAnd in parallel, depending on what I do. Works great!

ihatehn6• 1 year ago

The good news is that the fork team is a majority of the top contributors outside of the owners, and the owners have been burnt out and embroiled in conflict for months, so I expect the experience to be roughly the same or better going forward. Drawing users is a gradual process no matter what, but isn't really the #1 metric of a FOSS project... active contribution by diverse contributors is, next to usability and popularity.

neilv3• 1 year ago

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?

ihatehn6• 1 year ago

Most of the activity is public, so look at the usernames of the fork leaders vs their activity on the upstream project... It's most of the recent top contributors who've been around for a long time and made their perspectives pretty clear.

neilv3• 1 year ago

Good point. I wonder whether it would be good for forks to come with a page that makes a case for the legitimacy of the fork and who will be controlling it and/or setting the founding rules for the governance. With links back to supporting raw evidence in repos and forums, so people can verify.

The thing being forked could also respond to these clear assertion, which could be a check against confusing forks that are bad-faith, ill-conceived, not necessarily aligned, etc.

(Of course, when I hear of a fork, I instantly assume that there was probably a good reason, and there usually is, but always assuming that is a mistake, which exposes us another way to bad actor risk.)

evolve2k• 1 year ago

A few people are talking about multiple issues in the open mapping space.

Today (bear with me), I was looking at a tool called SwiftWave it lets you run your own Platform as a Service. The only reason I mention it is that I found interesting how they’ve really broken the problem domain into a series of smaller open source projects.

https://swiftwave.org/docs/contribution_guideline

I’d love some folk riffing on how this may help, surely nice interfaces for cycling vs driving vs public transport don’t need to be reinvented across projects. How can diff apps work as an ecosystem to allow the brining together of more sophisticated apps that mirror the feature set of the large funded maps apps?

0xbadcafebee2• 1 year ago

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. This seems like it'll hurt the community more than if they'd waited until it was necessary.

palata10• 1 year ago

not because there is a change happening from Organic

They mention financial transparency. I don't know the details, but "we want to know what our donations are used for" is a reasonable request to have, I would say.

Stephen3042• 1 year ago

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.

rafram2• 1 year ago

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.

red_trumpet• 1 year ago

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

lolinder5• 1 year ago

I think that the open source community is too quick to make "just fork it later" the answer to all our governance woes.

Look at the state of WordPress: the (B?)DFL actively bans people from the community for critiquing his self-described "nuclear war" waged against his biggest competitor in the hosting space, which "nuclear war" has caught thousands of members of the community in the crossfire. And yet we see no fork. Why? Because forking is hard and fragments the community, so people would rather put up with a tyrant than deal with the risk of instability. This is no different than tyrants in any other environment.

If a project has good governance established from the beginning, including a reasonably democratic process for contributors to elect the executive function, then the community can be reasonably sure that they won't feel the need to fork in the future because they have recourse if things go sour.

apitman• 1 year ago

Forkability is an underused metric when evaluating an open source tool.

mpol• 1 year ago

If I understand correctly, there is work going in inside the WordPress community. Not sure if and when things will happen, I am not involved personally.

tomsmeding2• 1 year ago

A difference between Wordpress and Organic Maps, though, is that Wordpress is a framework whereas Organic Maps is an application. Switching to a fork of Wordpress means a different extension marketplace, various config files that may need to be changed, etc. Switching to a fork of Organic Maps is just downloading a different app that does the same thing.

Completely irrespective of the governance structure of Organic Maps, by its nature it is much more easily forkable than something like Wordpress.

aucisson_masque2• 1 year ago

Apes Together Strong

Absolutely 100% agree with your statement, Linux desktop is the perfect example of that. You get a billion different distribution that all comes from debian, arch and maybe fedora but that's all.

In my opinion, there should be 3 Linux distribution. That's all.

For instance Ubuntu: Yeah Ubuntu gnome suck, yeah canonical push snap package when flappack are better but do you really need a new distribution because of that ?

Perfection is the enemy of progress. And when things go all bad and you have used all other alternative, then and only then forking should be considered. Like a nuclear button.

Currently i feel like it's more often used by newcomer that want to get to the lead position of a project they are passionate about but didn't start, so they fork and get a fraction of the community behind. It's not much but it's still a bit.

wltr2• 1 year ago

So, I guess that’s a pretty awesome business plan. Establish some open source entity, let the community develop everything for you, sell the entity, then fork it, let the community develop everything for you, sell again, then fork it, let the community …

Mr_Bees69• 1 year ago

this appears to be an offshoot of the hidden MIT code snafu from a bit back

atoav• 1 year ago

Isn't that a valid worry? Especially in a project that needs user contribution the eventual horizon does matter.

Would you shovel dirt in a community garden project if you know the guy on top will eventually turn it into a commercial business? That means your work wasn't going towards a nice community garden as you thought, but it was going towards one guy being too stingy to actually pay labour. Sure maybe that guy didn't know he would do that from the beginning, but what difference would it make?

Governance does matter.

metalman• 1 year ago

funny, I had to abandon open maps,yesterday, for a fork, as they no longer have an english language version, that used to be hidden under "tranport",which is now reduced to purple and green andessentialy no map info.

smcleod• 1 year ago

I'm not sure I understand why an open source maps app needs shareholders in the first place?

will-bradley10• 1 year ago

Originally Alexander said that it was just too hard to register a nonprofit. I think the real answer is that he always intended to use it as an investment and sell it off (open source, but basically selling the userbase, just like Maps.ME.) Hopefully we can prove all that wrong and get a not-for-profit organization assembled and sustainable!

wltr2• 1 year ago

I would be sceptical to this initiative too, as they never mentioned in their timeline on the co maps website that the reason the original Maps with me project was forked because the original one was sold. And not just sold, but sold to Russians, the infamous Mail ru group. Which is basically the KGB spying project led by a greasy oligarch.

gitroom• 1 year ago

Honestly just feels like every new fork is more drama packed onto old drama and nothing ever really gets fixed. You ever wonder if all this splitting and fighting actually makes stuff better or just burns everyone out?

A community-led fork of Organic Maps

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