Organic Maps Forked Over Governance Concerns: CoMaps is Born
Organic Maps Forked Over Governance Concerns: CoMaps is Born
An Organic Maps fork has emerged due to broken trust.
You might know of Organic Maps, the open source app that's an alternative to Google Maps. Recently, concerns have been raised about its governance, with many contributors questioning the project's transparency and direction.
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.
These shareholders have reportedly used the project’s donation funds for personal expenses, like holiday trips, raising serious concerns about financial transparency.
As a result, many contributors teamed up and forked the project, establishing CoMaps, a new alternative focused on openness and being not-for-profit.
project’s donation funds for personal expenses, like holiday trips
I do have the same overall concerns though and for me enough reason to switch the moment its possible also. But I tend to see the 'the holiday trips' as a symtpom instead of a problem. Later on they explained that some developers received 3 months salary worth of pay over the course of 4 years. Putting a lot more time in it during those four years. If I contributed that much for free I also would spend it on a holiday. But the problem is like you said transparancy:
- No openness of financial transactions which I guess showing salary wouldnt be a problem and if everybody was able to see the salary was reasonable. (and I dont care what people do with it in their private live).
- Maybe they didnt organise it that way (paying oneself for labour and tell everyone) but maybe they used it directly for holidays etc, which is a problem for the business entity they have I guess. Like my boss paying my holiday instead of my salary.
- Reluctant to answer questions in reasonable timeframes (couple of months)
These shareholders have reportedly used the project’s donation funds for personal expenses, like holiday trips, raising serious concerns about financial transparency.
Good to see devs willing to do the work needed in order to draw hard lines on the capitalist leeches that divert money away from the project. I am looking forward to the traffic system that they mentioned as a future option. Would allow users that are okay with turning on those features for adding crowdsourced traffic data and stuff like marking cops posting up to get their quotas.
Literally the only thing that keeps me on Waze is that stuff. I have to deal with a lot of interstate travel to and from work and knowing that a big crash happened so I can re-route before getting stuck is crucial. I will still make sure to have this installed just like I had Organic Maps as a good option. And to see what stuff I go to that needs to be updated on OSM and StreetComplete. Had to add all of the addresses on my street on OSM a while ago just to be able to correctly enter my address. One of those addresses that is listed as one town for mailing and is technically within the borders of a smaller one with regards to utilities and plots of land.
The traffic system would be amazing. This is what is stopping me from using this.
Magic Earth
is open source andhas traffic/crowd sourced stuff like WazeEdit: Sorry guys, I don't know why I thought Magic Earth was open source. Really looking forward to this if they get traffic data in there!
Quick heads up for anyone running verbose NextDNS configs, you'll need to add an exception for this entry currently to start the initial download
community-driven project […] shareholders
How does that work?
Socialize the cost, privatize the profits.
I hope they will make the destination search much better, it's almost unusable now, and unintuitive. Regarding traffic data, how much could it be per user per year, something like this https://www.mapbox.com/traffic-data ?
Destination search in all the OSM based maps is a challenge. The Latin letter transliteration only applies to large features. So if I want to find an address in a country try that doesn't use Latin script, I literally need a keyboard in that language or do a lot of cut and paste from Google Translate. My address never, ever works on OSM. Gets the wrong street, can't even handle house/building numbers. Works fine on Google.
Magic Earth handles it decently.
Magic Earth search isn't that good neither. I use GMaps-WV to get the adress then, once clipped in memory, it opens MagicEarth automatically/
Will there be an alternative to StreetComplete? An Apps that lets you contribute to CoMaps instead of Organic Maps?
edit n/m. I found out that StreetComplete contributes to OpenStreetMaps.
Offtopic: Is it possible to "avoid road" upon tapping a location? OsmAnd offers this feature, in case you are confronted with a road block or construction site. CoMaps does not it seems. I can not correct routing live without this function.
Organic Maps and thus by extension CoMaps are supposed to be minimalist and light on features. They are kinda the polar opposite to OSMAnd (at least regarding that)
What was the benefit of Organic Maps over OsmAnd or other options? I never understood why Organic Maps was getting so much traction.
I prefer the simple interface of organic maps
OM and for now CoMaps are faster and easier to learn. For most people. With OSMand configurations are endless and people tend to get lost in them. Also the map data of OM is highly filtered OSM data. Meaning smaller files and a faster app.
The downside is less features, but as always ... if you dont need the absent features ... its a plus.
Now whats interesting how they both will keep it that way. My theory is when they listen to EVERY wish from random users (with other persona and user stories) they eventually become like OSMand too.
Organic maps (and now comaps) have a much better rendering engine. It's much faster, while also being much more legible. It's routing engine is also faster.
OsmAnd does have the upper hand when it wcomes to features though. I have both and use OsmaAnd when I need to export a route to GPX or see relief.
Organic maps has traffic, osmand doesn't. I feel osmand is better in pretty much every other situation but organic maps has traffic.
My Organic Maps doesn't have traffic (or doesn't for my area). I can't see anything about it online either, except discussions about how it could be implemented.
Where do you find the traffic info? Even if zoomed in to New York I see nothing.
@pineapple @lewdian69 does it have traffic? Who provides that data?
For me its the android auto compatibility. OSM won't (and probably shouldnt) jump through the google hoops to do so. It's at least nice to have a more open option for an otherwise very proprietary ecosystem. Even though organic maps has room to improve
I could not find any word of an iOS version of CoMap. Does someone know?
Organic Maps was on iOS, my guess is that it'll take time to get a new app approved on the iOS store
Then users can pick between MAPS.me, Organic Maps and CoMaps. Crazy!!
aaaand uninstalled
Should have named it libre map.
A little variety shouldn't hurt. There are plenty of Libre X or Yet Another X projects already.
Installed, not seeing and noticeable difference to start but I'm glad someone took this up
Where does this fall on the spectrum of Differences in Opinion - We're Evil Now?
just migrated to Organic Maps from maps.me and would prefer to not have to export and import and adapt to new UI again
It's the same UI, and you can easily import your Organic Maps stuff.
