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I'd love to start recommending my friends use Organic Maps over Maps.me, but it's missing one critical feature: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issu

I'd love to start recommending my friends use Organic Maps over Maps.me, but it's missing one critical feature: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/1694 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/1694 ... right now your bookmarks aren't synchronised anywhere so if you lose your phone all your bookmarks are gone. When that's working I'll change over in a second!

neilv 3y ago
As comments in the first link suggest, the project emphasizes privacy, and it would have to be done in a privacy-respecting way. The second link is asking for iCloud synchronization. A project that emphasizes privacy and open platforms might want to just deprioritize requests coming from people on privacy-violating, closed platforms, since those people hurt their own credibility in the approaches they suggest.
- googlryas 3y ago
  Can't you just sync some encrypted blob to iCloud? How is iCloud privacy violating?
  - hedora 3y ago
    From reading the bug, they don’t support iCloud backup, which is surprising to me, since I thought supporting backup was trivial on iOS. As the bug points out, they could use core data sync for people that are navigating using multiple devices. I believe all of the above supports transparent E2E encryption at this point. (For backup, there is a toggle, since E2E makes your backup useless if you lose the only device that contains your keys, and many people only have one apple device, and don’t want to bother enlisting their friends to secret-share their recovery key).
- dash2 3y ago
  If privacy advocates want to persuade people outside their bubble, this is surely not the right attitude. Imagine telling someone who wants iCloud sync, "oh you're hurting your own credibility"? Uh yeah (backing off slowly), guess I'll go back to Apple/Google maps and miss out on the ineffable benefit of your non-functional, but deeply virtuous, software.
  - n2d4 3y ago
    These kind of projects aren't trying to cater to people who don't care about privacy. It caters to people who care about privacy, inside the bubble. I don't think Organic Maps is trying to become a unicorn Google Maps competitor that everyone can use.
  - neilv 3y ago
    We've lost a lot of ground on various open projects because of a bunch of people taking the free gifts, while being oblivious -- or indifferent -- to why we have those. Maybe it's time to try a different approach.
    - dash2 3y ago
      You shared things and people used them, yes. Now the new approach is… what exactly? Write software aimed at a minority of activists who pass its purity test? Be my guest, but spare me the piety and attitudinising of OP, and don’t be surprised when small scale results in high unit costs and missing features.
  - stonogo 3y ago
    Most of the privacy advocates I know have given up on persuading people outside their bubble and now merely want tools that don't spy on them. Proseletyzing doesn't really work, mostly because any attempt to have this conversation attracts people like you, contributing nothing but bad-faith sumamries and pretending anyone who disagrees with you is crazy or dangerous. Calling the software "non-functional" because it doesn't assume that everyone wants everything they do shipped off to a third party 'sync' service is disingenuous. "Backing off slowly" is just a pointless ad hominem. It's nice that the result is a slowly increasing collection of applications which don't make the same assumptions as the walled-garden offerings. It would be nicer if it could happen without the peanut gallery attacking everyone.
blowski 3y ago
This is the kind of feedback all such projects get. A million "if you just implement this one critical feature...". It must be really hard to balance giving all those users what they want, building quality code, keeping the project focused, and having low costs. Is it possible to enable this through extensions, or leveraging a product like OpenCloud?
- crooked-v 3y ago
  "Save everything to the cloud by default" is a standard piece of functionality for mobile apps now, not a small side feature.
  - spookie 3y ago
    It's a bit much to require an open source project to deal with the infrastructure to provide that, don't you think? All reasonable solutions would require the user to have done their part in setting up a nextcloud instance or something akin to that. And then, as the repo discussed, you would still see "oh, the majority don't know that".
    - Clent 3y ago
      On the iOS side, Apple provides the infrastructure via CloudKit.
      - spookie 3y ago
        Given the project's goals, that would be off the table. Someone could always fork it and add that feature though!
  - nine_k 3y ago
    Not requiring any cloud can also be a feature, and an important one for an offline-first project. Saving things to the cloud as an option, or an officially blessed way to auto-export data locally for your own backup setup, is important though.
- 3y ago
gitinit 3y ago
If I remember correctly, you can export bookmarks to a file, though this definitely doesn't replace proper synchronization.
kilolima 3y ago
You can export placemarks to a file and then use your own tools to sync. There's no reason why every single app has to include the kitchen sink.
- timeon 3y ago
  This. I'm tired of creating accounts. I have my own filesystem.
  - ninkendo 3y ago
    I think Apple solves this pretty well in iOS… there’s pretty simple iCloud API’s apps can use to store basic data (also structured data with CKDatabase/etc) which automatically just use the user’s iCloud account storage and implicitly are synced across devices. Apps don’t have to implement any cloud storage or consensus/etc, they just use the platform API’s and everything just works. I’d be shocked if android/play store didn’t have a similar thing.
    - skipnup 3y ago
      Same thing on Android, e.g., WhatsApp uses Google storage automatically for backups.
      - pydry 3y ago
        I hate the way whatsapp does it specifically because it wont let me back up to file.
        dddw 3y ago
        Oh it does backup to file, you just have just have to backup a very weird and almost hidden folder
        netsharc 3y ago
        Huh, on Android or iOS? On Android the backup settings page offer a backup to Google Drive, it also says "Your messages will also back up to your phone's internal storage."... On my phone the on-device backup can be found in /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases, and I remember reinstalling WhatsApp, logging in with my phone number, and it found the backup and restored the messages.
hdjrbrbn 3y ago
The whole offline first thing is the feature here. Also it is open source fix it yourself.
hulitu 3y ago
Online backups ? no way. They have enough of my data.

neilv 3y ago

As comments in the first link suggest, the project emphasizes privacy, and it would have to be done in a privacy-respecting way. The second link is asking for iCloud synchronization. A project that emphasizes privacy and open platforms might want to just deprioritize requests coming from people on privacy-violating, closed platforms, since those people hurt their own credibility in the approaches they suggest.

googlryas 3y ago
Can't you just sync some encrypted blob to iCloud? How is iCloud privacy violating?
- hedora 3y ago
  From reading the bug, they don’t support iCloud backup, which is surprising to me, since I thought supporting backup was trivial on iOS. As the bug points out, they could use core data sync for people that are navigating using multiple devices. I believe all of the above supports transparent E2E encryption at this point. (For backup, there is a toggle, since E2E makes your backup useless if you lose the only device that contains your keys, and many people only have one apple device, and don’t want to bother enlisting their friends to secret-share their recovery key).
dash2 3y ago
If privacy advocates want to persuade people outside their bubble, this is surely not the right attitude. Imagine telling someone who wants iCloud sync, "oh you're hurting your own credibility"? Uh yeah (backing off slowly), guess I'll go back to Apple/Google maps and miss out on the ineffable benefit of your non-functional, but deeply virtuous, software.
- n2d4 3y ago
  These kind of projects aren't trying to cater to people who don't care about privacy. It caters to people who care about privacy, inside the bubble. I don't think Organic Maps is trying to become a unicorn Google Maps competitor that everyone can use.
- neilv 3y ago
  We've lost a lot of ground on various open projects because of a bunch of people taking the free gifts, while being oblivious -- or indifferent -- to why we have those. Maybe it's time to try a different approach.
  - dash2 3y ago
    You shared things and people used them, yes. Now the new approach is… what exactly? Write software aimed at a minority of activists who pass its purity test? Be my guest, but spare me the piety and attitudinising of OP, and don’t be surprised when small scale results in high unit costs and missing features.
- stonogo 3y ago
  Most of the privacy advocates I know have given up on persuading people outside their bubble and now merely want tools that don't spy on them. Proseletyzing doesn't really work, mostly because any attempt to have this conversation attracts people like you, contributing nothing but bad-faith sumamries and pretending anyone who disagrees with you is crazy or dangerous. Calling the software "non-functional" because it doesn't assume that everyone wants everything they do shipped off to a third party 'sync' service is disingenuous. "Backing off slowly" is just a pointless ad hominem. It's nice that the result is a slowly increasing collection of applications which don't make the same assumptions as the walled-garden offerings. It would be nicer if it could happen without the peanut gallery attacking everyone.

blowski 3y ago

This is the kind of feedback all such projects get. A million "if you just implement this one critical feature...". It must be really hard to balance giving all those users what they want, building quality code, keeping the project focused, and having low costs. Is it possible to enable this through extensions, or leveraging a product like OpenCloud?

crooked-v 3y ago
"Save everything to the cloud by default" is a standard piece of functionality for mobile apps now, not a small side feature.
- spookie 3y ago
  It's a bit much to require an open source project to deal with the infrastructure to provide that, don't you think? All reasonable solutions would require the user to have done their part in setting up a nextcloud instance or something akin to that. And then, as the repo discussed, you would still see "oh, the majority don't know that".
  - Clent 3y ago
    On the iOS side, Apple provides the infrastructure via CloudKit.
    - spookie 3y ago
      Given the project's goals, that would be off the table. Someone could always fork it and add that feature though!
- nine_k 3y ago
  Not requiring any cloud can also be a feature, and an important one for an offline-first project. Saving things to the cloud as an option, or an officially blessed way to auto-export data locally for your own backup setup, is important though.
3y ago

gitinit 3y ago

If I remember correctly, you can export bookmarks to a file, though this definitely doesn't replace proper synchronization.

kilolima 3y ago

You can export placemarks to a file and then use your own tools to sync. There's no reason why every single app has to include the kitchen sink.

timeon 3y ago
This. I'm tired of creating accounts. I have my own filesystem.
- ninkendo 3y ago
  I think Apple solves this pretty well in iOS… there’s pretty simple iCloud API’s apps can use to store basic data (also structured data with CKDatabase/etc) which automatically just use the user’s iCloud account storage and implicitly are synced across devices. Apps don’t have to implement any cloud storage or consensus/etc, they just use the platform API’s and everything just works. I’d be shocked if android/play store didn’t have a similar thing.
  - skipnup 3y ago
    Same thing on Android, e.g., WhatsApp uses Google storage automatically for backups.
    - pydry 3y ago
      I hate the way whatsapp does it specifically because it wont let me back up to file.
      - dddw 3y ago
        Oh it does backup to file, you just have just have to backup a very weird and almost hidden folder
      - netsharc 3y ago
        Huh, on Android or iOS? On Android the backup settings page offer a backup to Google Drive, it also says "Your messages will also back up to your phone's internal storage."... On my phone the on-device backup can be found in /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases, and I remember reinstalling WhatsApp, logging in with my phone number, and it found the backup and restored the messages.

hdjrbrbn 3y ago

The whole offline first thing is the feature here. Also it is open source fix it yourself.

hulitu 3y ago

Online backups ? no way. They have enough of my data.