Cartes.app – a free and open map, a Web alternative to Google and Apple maps

by mistermatt • 16 days ago

2 4 16 days ago

Why not a donation system?
We considered this option: letting everyone contribute an amount of their choice to support the initiative. But Cartes.app is not a charity, nor is it a free software component on a shelf: it is a service that consumes resources with every use and must handle the load of thousands of daily users.
Moreover, we still have many features to add to compete with Big Tech, which requires investments.

So you want the public to fund your business and what it gets in return is the honour of improving your business and "compete with Big Tech"?

I think there's a strong incentive to take their chances with Big Tech until a better alternative pops up. In my view, a public service should benefit (and be controlled by) the public. If it's not controlled by the public, there's little difference between a big US provider and a big Chinese or European one.

maelito2• 14 days ago

So you want the public to fund your business and what it gets in return is the honour of improving your business and "compete with Big Tech"?

To fund an open-source and open-data business, yes.

I think there's a strong incentive to take their chances with Big Tech until a better alternative pops up.

How do you think an alternative to duopolistic apps valued hundreds of billions could emerge without funding ? The problem is hard, we know it. We think the startup way, raising millions for a map app to compete with Google, has less chances of success than building a modern common.

In my view, a public service should benefit (and be controlled by) the public.

Isn't open-source software the closer model to what you desire ? A "public" map app in the sense of "developed and hosted by the government" could enable large funding, but could also be quite frightening.

Actually, it's one of the reasons some Europeans want to quit Google & Apple maps : on top of being economic mastodons, they are excessively close to the US, a state that has gone the way of government corruption, to say the least.

robtherobber2• 14 days ago

How do you think an alternative to duopolistic apps valued hundreds of billions could emerge without funding ?

Government or non-governmental public bodies. Or new legal / administrative entities that are not driven by profit; we are not, as a matter of fact, tied to a binary choice situation whereby private businesses are the better option for such a crucial service.

Isn't open-source software the closer model to what you desire ?

It can (and it should) definitely be open source, I concur. But that's not necessarily an ownership and control discussion, even less so when we're taking into consideration the infrastructure required for such a project. Genuine public ownership / control assumes giving the leverages (decision-making, governance, choices, infrastructure, model etc.) to the public itself in one form or another. It can be done via a government, but there are reasons to suspect that governments will eventually abuse it or under-fund it, like they often eventually have done; however, that is still a better option than private ownership and control.

A "public" map app in the sense of "developed and hosted by the government" could enable large funding, but could also be quite frightening.

I disagree. If it's a dictatorship, then private ownership and governance are already not very credible or private. If it's a real democracy, then the public should be able to exert control over it via its institutions and democratic processes. That said, I also prefer a model where the government doesn't own such a platform and dictate how it's developed and used.

In a hierarchy of ownership and governance models from worst to best, private is likely the worst (Google, Apple & the like), followed by governments, and genuine public ownership where citizens themselves can decide how it operates and evolves. The question of money is also partially real: private companies themselves don't create money out of thin air, they rely on public infrastructure (from currency, to legislation/operating rules, to the economy) to operate and need paying consumers that have money, especially a b2c company like this one. In other words, the money is already there, it's just out of reach.

Cartes.app – a free and open map, a Web alternative to Google and Apple maps

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