PieFedMaps.me co-founder tries to close down Organic Maps open-source fork - HN
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42343121
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22858212
22 Comments
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KelsonVIf I'm reading this correctly, the headline is...very inaccurate.
It looks like a dispute between two developers in Organic Maps, who both started out at Maps.me, specifically over whether their CDN redirector should be public or private.
It's one of the reasons I linked the hn discussion. Lots of accusations going around right now. It's unfortunate as I like that app, but this kind of splitting is important to know about.
I Cast FistSo, what's the point of Organic Maps or maps.me? The latter's website just say "download and prepare for adventure", like some sort of app for route preparation?
oKtosiTeWhere i live, Organic Maps has way better walking directions than Google and Apple Maps, and it’s a lot more respectful of privacy than at least the former.
My experience with HN is comments from out-of-touch engineers and me-too startup folks circle jerking with themselves. Can't say they're any better than the random discourse on social media.
Yea, the comments there are just, wrong.
People claiming since the repo wasn't public the MIT license didn't matter. But since admins contributed under that license, it 100% matters.
No reason to wait for the dust to settle. Roman noticed a removal of an MIT license he contributed to, also noticed the inclusion of user logging, so he released MIT work he contributed to. He's in the right.
It's a shame.
Looks like the dispute is with one of the devs who didn't work on maps.me.
Regardless, it's probably best to wait until the dust settles to see what the facts are.
tabularSad, but also funny to see someone revoke an MIT license. Presumably they think that is retroactive as why do it otherwise. Instead of preventing use they just un-invite themselves from any group that wishes to continue it's open source development.
Wow, that's an incredible misunderstanding of copyright. Screw 'em.
Organic Maps rocks. Maybe I'll go donate.
Edit: Read a bit of the discussion and it seems this is 100% Organic Maps, Maps.me is unrelated. I'll hold off until the drama revolves.
Seems like some spicy drama. I'll check back in a few days to see how it resolves. I love Organic Maps and I hope the core team resolves this appropriately.
See also https://aussie.zone/post/15854596
m-p{3}https://lemmyverse.link/aussie.zone/post/15854596 to stay on your home instance.
Sometimes I wish lemmy/fediverse had an option to detect if something was on the fedi and give you the option to direct link. Would make it nicer to vote/follow.
In Eternity, my link works and opens in the app while the lemmyverse.link 'cannot be resolved'.
MangoPenguinI don't understand how lemmy and fedi apps in general *still* have this problem, they never seem to be able to recognize a link and just show it on my home instance.
Much like the other user, the instance link works for me and keeps me local, but the lemmy verse link takes me to that instance.
Did you select your home instance when accessing https://lemmyverse.link/ for the first time?
very icky, no good
Man, so much attempt to stir up drama. Can they just talk about why they initially added the MIT license if they didn't intend to make it public, why they didn't make it public and open source, and what needs to happen to do that in a way and at a time that everyone is happy with, without having to do so with the eyes of the internet on them?
A good opportunity to remind everyone that *a vastly superior alternative to Organic Maps already exists*: Osmand.
Same problem that Osmand is dependend on their backend for map data download
Organic Maps is better for "normal" users if you ask me. Osmand is better for pro users but quite clunky.
Yes, Osmand is definitely clunky by comparison. But the UX is getting slowly more intuitive. I see no reason why Osmand's easy-peasy defaults mode cannot end up equal to to OM. They're not far off, and at that point its superiority would be clear as day.
Personally I wish the OM devs could have contributed their talents to making Osmand better. Really feels like wasteful duplication which benefits nobody benefits except the egos of a handful of developers. A common problem with FOSS and this is a great example IMO.
I wish Organic maps would add some of the features from OsmAnd. I want the ability to select a part of the map to avoid.
Did osmand change its rendering engine to make it as smooth as OM?
Something changed to that effect a while back, yes. OM continues to look and feel a bit better (possibly a subjective experience) but it is *so* feature-poor by comparison.
I just tested it again on my Fairphone 5 and it's still slow. I'm not talking about the UI but the rendering of maps. Unless they somehow manage to fix that, it'll keep being a poor experience.
Osmand has a terrible user interface
It is also only open core and hides features behind a paywall.
Gross
I don't think this is true in that sense. You can get the full experience for free by - either building it your self - or simply on FDroid. If you still use Gruesome Playstore, then yes, it is "soft paywalled".
Or do you mean other features that are not even in the FDroid build? (Which could be some proprietary features.)
I doubt they gift you accumulated hundreds of dollars yearly worth of premium features plus all the stuff hidden behind the paywall just because you didn't load from the Google Play Store.
If you have a fully open source product (with a permissive license) you can't just "paywall" it, as FOSS licenses allow you to build and often redistribute the product.
When you have a fully open source product and want to build a valid business model from it, you have to work WITH your license. The OsmAnd team chose an interesting way to do this by "paywalling" the Playstore version "OsmAnd+". But you still can get all the stuff, as it is open source.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OsmAnd#Licensing
Welcome to the world of FOSS. 🌍
OsmAND is not superior at all. It is unintuitive and prone to crashes.
Or perhaps it's your software stack. I've used it constantly for well over a decade, every day, on multiple devices, and crashes have been vanishingly rare.
"It works for me"
"It doesn't work for me." Your argument is also just an anecdote.
Personally, I love OsmAnd because of the power features. In the best sense "it works for me". However, I would recommend OM to not-so-nerdy friends and family as it is just simpler to use and understand due to the fewer features.
I would disagree. I have both and use each for different tasks.
OSMAnd is clunky and unintuitive. I have learned it well and have it setup for land navigation type stuff. It's incredibly good at displaying every last detail of the topography.
Organic Maps is fantastic for city navigation. It's smooth and quick and ever since the addition of turn-by-turn voice navigation I'm in love. I use the Sherpa Onnx voices and they sound so lifelike.
Interesting perspective. I too have used Osmand (or "OsmAnd" or "OSMAnd" or whatever unpronounceable official name it is) for years. 13 years to be precisely, without a break. I've contributed numerous bug reports and feature requests. It's clunky and unintuitive yes, but I've seen worse in other power apps of this kind.
But Osmand is still lacking a couple of features on my personal wishlist, so I naturally gave Organic Maps a decent audition, navigation included. I found that it did only one thing better: rendering of subway lines in dense cities. But this has now been largely fixed by a new setting in Osmand (cleverly hidden, obviously). In everything else, OM just felt to me like a poor man's alternative to Osmand. With a busy hive of developers earnestly working towards feature parity sometime in the next millennium.
These two projects have the exactly the same objectives. I continue to wish the OM developers would just put aside their egos and help fix whatever it is they don't like in Osmand. That's the point of FOSS.