pastk

Because we have similar costs in CoMaps, e.g. the most expensive part is the map generation server and both OM and CoMaps rent the same model from the same provider and its less than 250 eur/month.

And according to https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/16225385/Organic-Maps... in 2025 they got ~120k eur and this figure likely doesn't include all the donation sources (in addition to the main Stripe channel they also have OpenCollective, LiberaPay, crypto...)

Hosting etc. expenses are a minor fraction compared to OM's donations inflow. And its enough to hire devs, the first dev was hired more than two years ago, but they have been hiding this fact to look more poor and attract more donations.

Even long-term active contributors have been denied even totals information about donations and got to know about first hire by chance about a year since the fact.

The code in question was in Apache 2.0 repo and DCO signed agreeing its a public contribution.

Please see my post above for details.

Also me and other CoMaps contributors had been actually banned several months later after they've started their accusations, so the ban is not directly because of the accusations.

At first we've been having discussion and arguing about the matter and related topics in OM chats. But people saw their very shaky arguments and how they refute their own previous words about openness of the maps generator etc.

So then they started just deleting such discussions and eventually banning CoMaps contributors.

And nowadays they censor all mentions of CoMaps in their chats and SMs and often ban users who dared to mention us.

you intentionally leaked the map generation code (which was not intended to be published)

In short:

It was perfectly legal to publish this code (Apache 2.0 repo and DCO signed agreeing its a public contribution) and OM shareholders have always claimed that the map generator code is open and people are free to fork it.

However it turned out they were holding back a bunch of commits to prevent people from easily forking the project while maintaining still that the commits are FOSS and will be eventually pushed to the main repo, its just they're "experimental" still (but in fact they had been used in prod for a few years already).

We made an agreement to fix this discrepancy and push the commits to the public repo, so that we can honestly state that Organic Maps is truly an open source project with no tricks and reservations. This has happened several months before the conflict between the shareholders and community contributors.

And indeed a good part of the commits had been pushed public during next months. And when I published the rest of the commits OM shareholders knew about it of course and again they didn't say anything against it.

However after about a month (after negotiations to improve OM governance has failed and ex-contributors, me included, have started CoMaps) they have started accusing me of "stealing" those commits.

If you're interested in more details then please refer to https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/organic-maps-open-lett...

To clarify - this quote pertains to the Organic Maps situation

Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.

CoMaps had been started because Organic Maps shareholders were not interested fixing those governance and transparency issues.

Proprietary parts had been mentioned in the context of Organic Maps - their map generator is partially closed source, and even OM F-Droid build includes some proprietary assets.

In CoMaps we are serious about being 100% FOSS and this is one of the reasons we've forked from OM.

Don't worry, we have no proprietary code in all builds of CoMaps, not just F-Droid one :)

made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.

FYI I've been the most active non-shareholder contributor of Organic Maps for 3+ years. Though you won't see me (or other ex-OM contributors who've left to start CoMaps) in OM github contributor stats anymore, because OM had banned us (and nowadays they also ban users in their chats and SM accounts for just mentioning CoMaps). But you can still see our PRs, e.g. I've authored Outdoor map style amongst many other improvements.

You're right though that CoMaps had been founded because of things like governance, transparency, community and FOSS values, while many users are just interested in features (and hence often prefer Maps.ME even, which is like 10x more popular than OM looking at downloads).

CoMaps project celebrated its first birthday recently!

https://www.comaps.app/news/2026-05-12/celebrating-the-first...

There is an outdoor map style which is more contrast to the general/default style, if that helps.

There is a subway overlay. And there is marked hiking routes overlay being in development. There is a also an outdoor-focused map style (some people call it a layer too).

Feature-wise projects grow more and more different. Ultimately it'd depend what exact features are important to you.

The following overview might help a bit: https://www.comaps.app/support/how-do-the-features-differ-fr... https://www.comaps.app/support/how-does-the-comaps-project-d...

Display of marked hiking/cycling routes is a different feature from display of trails and tracks. I.e. a marked route is usually a well-known and/or official one and often quite long (sometimes international even) route which goes through many different trails and tracks and even some roads etc.

And - as it had been mentioned above already - its coming to CoMaps too.

Indeed and this is one of the key reasons we have started CoMaps. The main OM shareholder made it clear to us that interests of the company and the shareholders are at the forefront.

Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case.

In fact, nowadays there are many more closed parts in OM's map generator - many OM's bigger new features like hiking, cycling and bus routes depend on closed source improvements to the map generator. And some binary files required to build the app (e.g. packed_polygons.bin) are nowadays distributed under a custom non-FOSS data license. I.e. nowadays its basically impossible to fork OM as is with all its features - and the "right to fork" is a cornerstone of FOSS.

Also ref to: https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/organic-maps/

IsItReallyFOSS has recently summarized concerns about Organic Maps in regards of FOSS values, check isitreallyfoss.com/projects/organic-maps/

Making map generator proprietary won't help to solve "freeloaders hogging onto their map CDN" issue. In fact, it actually forces potential forks to use their CDN because they can't setup their own map generation (as its closed source).

The OM's map generator was made proprietary in order to hinder the right to fork and enforce vendor lock-in. Later, a proprietary "Data License" had been introduced for binary files (incl. maps) with the same goal - effectively one can't build/fork OM without these files anymore.

First of all its about truly community-driven, open and transparent governace and project's finances. And living by the FOSS and non-profit values.

But if your question is more about app features, then see my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44455300

It should work.

But make sure that the app is installed from Google Play. Google prohibits use of navigation apps in AA from other sources.

CoMaps cherry-picks changes from Organic Maps regularly. OM is also free to pick from CoMaps, but so far they haven't been doing so.

And yes, amount of work done on OM has reduced significantly, as many contribturos have moved to CoMaps.

Still, features-wise priorities of both projects are quite similar. E.g. being easy to use and simple , offline-focused, etc.

I would say CoMaps is a bit more serious about privacy and is also more open to customization by users (to a reasonable extent).

As CoMaps is a community-driven project then it's possible that with time the growing community would change the direction of the project somewhat.

But the biggest differences that actually were the reason for forking - are in the way the project is run - CoMaps is truly community-driven, open and transparent, which includes project's finances and decision-making.

Sure! Check here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44455300

I've answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44455300

Talking about the app features, here are some of the bigger / easier to notice differences:

- added automatic backups for bookmarks and tracks

- added 100m-step altitude isolines to all regions that had worse or no isolines

- a big rework of the map colors - lighter, warmer, friendlier

- add a setting to customize the leftmost button or hide it

- removed semi-transparent background in Subway layer

And there is a bunch of smaller changes, for details check the release notes: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/releases

I'll just quote Oleg, who was an Organic Maps contributor working on the new website (amongst other things) and is in the CoMaps team now:

"The original design was created by me. I also personally hired and paid for a designer to also work on the design. Later I hired a developer and paid him myself to develop the website. Recently minor updates were made, for example removing the stock photos from the Community page, which was paid by OM. This was from the beginning through today open source under the Apache license."

You can export your bookmarks as KML files and import them into OM.

How come the server code was (is?) de-facto closed source and this fact was kept hidden?

In a project that claims to be open-source, privacy-focused and community-driven.

Nope, Roman has actively contributed to this MIT-licensed code since its inception in 2021.

The MIT license was added by Alexander himself in the initial commit in June 2021. Since then Roman has contributed actively to the code and Viktor started to contribute more recently too.

So there are people who contributed the code under the MIT license, so its not a sole work of Alexander and the license was not added as a mistake.

The MIT license was added by Alexander himself in the initial commit in June 2021. Since then Roman has contributed actively to the code and Viktor started to contribute more recently.

So there are people who contributed the code under the MIT license, so its not a sole work of Alexander and the license was not added as a mistake.

IMO from a legal standpoint Roman is absolutely in his right to redistribute the code.