MichałSep 4, 2025
laund

Turns out, after not engaging with the #OpenStreetMap space for a while, i was just looking at the Droid-ify explore page and theres a new map app for android: @CoMaps

After noticing it looked very familiar, i found out why: It seems the developers of #organicMaps went too far into a for-profit direction, with too little transparency, leading to a more community focused fork. I loved the fast and beautiful map rendering of organicmaps, with its 3d buildings that help a ton with quickly understanding the map, so i'm glad to see an active fork like this. I'm also glad #CoMaps seems to be implementing lots of changes on top of the upstream organicmaps, as seen by the full release notes on Codeberg which clearly label upstream contributions.

https://www.comaps.app/

Hike, Bike, Drive Offline – Navigate with Privacy

Discover more of your journey - Powered by the community

Sep 4, 2025 at 9:41amWeb
Show threadEtuaNov 16
@laund @CoMaps Weren't Organic Maps made to, you know, finally appeal to the common user? Unfortunately, I feel like the community always upholding the ideological purity will remain in constant discussions, and the common man will remain with their one stop shop of Google Maps and occasionally OSM as a layer in another corporate product without knowing what they actually use.
And yes, I'm the lazy bastard reviewing them without coding into any of the available solutions, but that's not quite my point.
Show threadlaundNov 16

@etua_en @CoMaps I think the concerns about project direction and health were warranted. Despite what you seem to think, people don't just create, maintain, and release a fork for a project like this over nothing. Yes, it will inevitably slow down development some small amount, but thats better than a project like this being under uncertain management and slowly withering away.

It must be a very strange mindset under which a single relatively successful fork is a sign of the community "remaining in constant discussion".

Show threadEtuaNov 16
@laund @CoMaps I'll remind you that we're already talking about the fork of a fork. You seem to convolute 2 things and that's clearly shown in the 'it will inevitably slow down development some small amount'. That's the developer-oriented mindset, which is too often present in FOSS community. It's beautiful for people to create tools for themselves and share them, but then let's not pretend we're doing anything for the masses.
For your average user the switch from any mainstream solution to the OSM-first was probably painful enough that they'll either: a) stay with the original project, b) drop OSM altogether and come back to Google's safe pastures.
We have techno-monopolies in huge part thanks to how people will adapt to negative changes as long as they do not require them to download a new app with a slightly different UI.
Come on, that's clear even from the fiasco of the whole #ExiTT