6 ms·

There is also CoMaps (https://www.comaps.app/ https://www.comaps.app/) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https:

by Yacoby 2mo ago

There is also CoMaps (https://www.comaps.app/ https://www.comaps.app/) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/ https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/

b112 2mo ago
So sad. I imagine 99.9% of organic maps users will never know.
- hypercube33 2mo ago
  I was hoping for an offline open map with specifically tracking (My tracks from Google or now 3rd party) so I can log my adventures. bonus if I can save a printable thing for my wall or something...guess I know what this weekends project is.
  - TFNA 2mo ago
    OSMAnd is similarly OSM-based, offline, and FOSS (available from F-Droid) and does tracking. It is not typically recommended in posts like these because its wealth of options is daunting to the general public, while Organic Maps and CoMaps are more streamlined.
    - VorpalWay 2mo ago
      I have been a happy user of OsmAnd+ for over 15 years at this point, I can strongly recommend it if you need power user features. (Yes the OsmAnd+ is the paid version, but it is the old pay-once version and I have definitely got my money's worth at this point, and it supports an open source project.)
  - jraph 2mo ago
    Comaps can record tracks if that's what you need :-)
- Markoff 2mo ago
  And for 99.9% it will not make any difference, but I'm sure for some percentage of users missing hiking trails in CoMaps will make difference for sure. Why use fork of a fork which lacks features of the previous one? Users don't care about dev drama, if it doesn't affect them.
hirako2000 2mo ago
what are the concerns over governance of organics maps ?
- physicalecon 2mo ago
  Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case. Also people got upset that the developers used the product funding to pay for their personal expenses. The idea is folks want the developers to isolate all the money they make from this project and use it to only pay expenses directly related to this project. If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably. https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/?ref=itsfoss.com https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/?ref=itsfoss.com
  - beart 2mo ago
    > If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably. The tone of this comment is quite different from the text of the open letter to which you refer. Specifically this section. I don't have any personal knowledge either way, but this stood out to me. > As it was revealed by Roman @rtsisyk it wasn't unusual for the Shareholders to use project's donations as their own money e.g. Alexander @biodranik paid for his personal holiday trip expenses this way. At the same time all other contributors were consistently denied any access to any financial information (even to the totals of money donated/spent). (It's fine for developers to be reimbursed for their hard work, but it should be done in a fair, transparent and accountable way.)
    - cryo32 2mo ago
      Going on holiday is why I work. And I use organic maps when I’m on holiday. And donate. Good luck to them.
      - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
        > And donate How do you square this with Organic Maps being organised as a for-profit entity?
random3 2mo ago
Thank you! This is highly relavant. I wish OPs would put a bit more research into what they post https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/ https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/ > 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.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  > a small group of shareholders This is sketchy. The entity at the bottom of the page is Organic Maps OÜ, which is an Estonian private limited company. Estonia has non-profits (MTÜs). The fact that this isn't organised as one makes it a commercial venture, except one that asks for donations.
  - pastk 2mo ago
    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.
  - elAhmo 2mo ago
    e-Residency is most likely the main reason for this 'run' from Estonia.
    - wltr 2mo ago
      The original authors are from Russia, and their first product maps.me was sold to a Russian company with ties with Kremlin. I wouldn’t touch anything they do, so Organic was a no-go for me. Since it’s a new thing now, I can give it a go.
- cvoss 2mo ago
  This assumes that OP would make a different app choice if OP knew this context. And it also assumes OP does not know this context. Neither are supported by the evidence, since HN links are posted without OP commentary. Not everybody cares so much about this sort of thing and perhaps OP was drawn to the app for other reasons. HN is not a monoculture.
Doohickey-d 2mo ago
And Organic Maps is itself a fork of Maps.me, started ...due to concern over the governance of Maps.me (introduction of commercial elements I think?). This app has had quite a history.
- cosmicriver 2mo ago
  Maps.me was sold and the acquiring company moved to a new proprietary code base. The quality dropped considerably. That's what motivated the original Maps.me founders to start Organic Maps.
z3ugma 2mo ago
Just downloaded CoMaps. Why does it start with a zoomed out view of the entire world, especially given that I gave it location services and it shows my current location (in North America). The very first UX experience this app gives is "I am primarily for people interested in maps and geography" Contrast this with Apple Maps - when you open it, there are 4 big tap controls for actions like "Home" "Work", a search bar, and a map that covers a 1-mile radius around you . I'd encourage your UX flow to go something more like: request location services > if granted, immediately start downloading their local tileset in the background > zoom to a 20-mile radius around the user
- schubidubiduba 2mo ago
  CoMaps does have this exact UX flow actually. Unfortunately it is somewhat flaky and frequently falls back to not doing it.
- CircuitSeuss 2mo ago
  Unfortunately I have yet to find an OSM app that offers a properly usable modern interface. Most are passable if you are a nerd who doesn’t mind being inconvenienced and can work around the quirks; my non techy friends open the app once and immediately delete it. We really need an Apple or Google maps clone.
  - Tooster 2mo ago
    And the online mapping ecosystem is completely fragmented. Half the apps out there demand a $25/month subscription, creating these hermetic, proprietary silos. They are gating and monetizing trails, hikes, and routes that were crowdsourced by the community in the first place. I’m not paying $300 a year to buy back data that I personally contribute to. There are gazillion similar apps, with slight variations, and the more powerful ones look like something straight from 2000s. Instead of a pay-to-access model, a sustainable consumer map ecosystem could look like Wikipedia, or better yet, a peer-to-peer network like IPFS where you trade compute (route calculation) and storage. It could be a barter: you get to use the collective resources of the network because you are actively hosting tiles, routing data, or contributing metadata back into it. But that requires a critical mass to take off (like bitcoin did). OpenStreetMap is great, but what we actually need is a modern consumer frontend built on top of an open, distributed layer: decentralized public registry for user-generated content, keeping your routes and trip itineraries discoverable by any client app rather than locked inside VC-backed silos. Furthermore, current open-source projects miss a lot of quality-of-life features that commercial apps have—things like crowd-sourced opinions and reviews about places, public transit schedules, real-time traffic alerting and reporting, location sharing, street-view, and dependable speed limits during navigation. Without these active, live-data layers, the map looks stale and lagging behind the real world. The user interface also needs to shift from a passive viewport to a high-contribution editor. Right now, if you want to make serious geometry edits, you’re forced into JOSM. It’s hard to boot, clunky, and quite clearly has never seen a proper UI/UX designer, scaring away everyone but the most hardcore power users. I'm a person who doesn't give up easily, but when I tried adding parking zone regions for the city I gave up after 2 days of trying to make some sense of this software. A modern mobile UI should let you freehand draw a route that snaps to paths, edit regions on the fly, or drop advanced metadata — like parking restrictions — in just three obvious taps, without a steep technical learning curve. Finally, the client app itself should be a pluggable core. Instead of building every feature from scratch, it should allow users to plug in open modules for whatever they need, whether that's live public transit routing, traffic estimates, location sharing, or advanced 3D metro overlays. The data is there, and the rendering tech is there; we just need a shared, distributed network structure so companies can't charge us a premium to gate the social and metadata layers. I wish there was an EU initiative to have a fully featured app like that, unifying all the existing ones in place of N abhorrent, barely functional implementations in all of the different local public transport apps (looking at you italian AMT genova or you, french IDF mobilites).

by Yacoby 2mo ago

b112 2mo ago

So sad. I imagine 99.9% of organic maps users will never know.

hypercube33 2mo ago
I was hoping for an offline open map with specifically tracking (My tracks from Google or now 3rd party) so I can log my adventures. bonus if I can save a printable thing for my wall or something...guess I know what this weekends project is.
- TFNA 2mo ago
  OSMAnd is similarly OSM-based, offline, and FOSS (available from F-Droid) and does tracking. It is not typically recommended in posts like these because its wealth of options is daunting to the general public, while Organic Maps and CoMaps are more streamlined.
  - VorpalWay 2mo ago
    I have been a happy user of OsmAnd+ for over 15 years at this point, I can strongly recommend it if you need power user features. (Yes the OsmAnd+ is the paid version, but it is the old pay-once version and I have definitely got my money's worth at this point, and it supports an open source project.)
- jraph 2mo ago
  Comaps can record tracks if that's what you need :-)
Markoff 2mo ago
And for 99.9% it will not make any difference, but I'm sure for some percentage of users missing hiking trails in CoMaps will make difference for sure. Why use fork of a fork which lacks features of the previous one? Users don't care about dev drama, if it doesn't affect them.

hirako2000 2mo ago

what are the concerns over governance of organics maps ?

physicalecon 2mo ago
Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case. Also people got upset that the developers used the product funding to pay for their personal expenses. The idea is folks want the developers to isolate all the money they make from this project and use it to only pay expenses directly related to this project. If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably. https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/?ref=itsfoss.com https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/?ref=itsfoss.com
- beart 2mo ago
  > If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably. The tone of this comment is quite different from the text of the open letter to which you refer. Specifically this section. I don't have any personal knowledge either way, but this stood out to me. > As it was revealed by Roman @rtsisyk it wasn't unusual for the Shareholders to use project's donations as their own money e.g. Alexander @biodranik paid for his personal holiday trip expenses this way. At the same time all other contributors were consistently denied any access to any financial information (even to the totals of money donated/spent). (It's fine for developers to be reimbursed for their hard work, but it should be done in a fair, transparent and accountable way.)
  - cryo32 2mo ago
    Going on holiday is why I work. And I use organic maps when I’m on holiday. And donate. Good luck to them.
    - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
      > And donate How do you square this with Organic Maps being organised as a for-profit entity?

random3 2mo ago

Thank you! This is highly relavant. I wish OPs would put a bit more research into what they post https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/ https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/ > 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.

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
> a small group of shareholders This is sketchy. The entity at the bottom of the page is Organic Maps OÜ, which is an Estonian private limited company. Estonia has non-profits (MTÜs). The fact that this isn't organised as one makes it a commercial venture, except one that asks for donations.
- pastk 2mo ago
  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.
- elAhmo 2mo ago
  e-Residency is most likely the main reason for this 'run' from Estonia.
  - wltr 2mo ago
    The original authors are from Russia, and their first product maps.me was sold to a Russian company with ties with Kremlin. I wouldn’t touch anything they do, so Organic was a no-go for me. Since it’s a new thing now, I can give it a go.
cvoss 2mo ago
This assumes that OP would make a different app choice if OP knew this context. And it also assumes OP does not know this context. Neither are supported by the evidence, since HN links are posted without OP commentary. Not everybody cares so much about this sort of thing and perhaps OP was drawn to the app for other reasons. HN is not a monoculture.

Doohickey-d 2mo ago

And Organic Maps is itself a fork of Maps.me, started ...due to concern over the governance of Maps.me (introduction of commercial elements I think?). This app has had quite a history.

cosmicriver 2mo ago
Maps.me was sold and the acquiring company moved to a new proprietary code base. The quality dropped considerably. That's what motivated the original Maps.me founders to start Organic Maps.

z3ugma 2mo ago

Just downloaded CoMaps. Why does it start with a zoomed out view of the entire world, especially given that I gave it location services and it shows my current location (in North America). The very first UX experience this app gives is "I am primarily for people interested in maps and geography" Contrast this with Apple Maps - when you open it, there are 4 big tap controls for actions like "Home" "Work", a search bar, and a map that covers a 1-mile radius around you . I'd encourage your UX flow to go something more like: request location services > if granted, immediately start downloading their local tileset in the background > zoom to a 20-mile radius around the user

schubidubiduba 2mo ago
CoMaps does have this exact UX flow actually. Unfortunately it is somewhat flaky and frequently falls back to not doing it.
CircuitSeuss 2mo ago
Unfortunately I have yet to find an OSM app that offers a properly usable modern interface. Most are passable if you are a nerd who doesn’t mind being inconvenienced and can work around the quirks; my non techy friends open the app once and immediately delete it. We really need an Apple or Google maps clone.
- Tooster 2mo ago
  And the online mapping ecosystem is completely fragmented. Half the apps out there demand a $25/month subscription, creating these hermetic, proprietary silos. They are gating and monetizing trails, hikes, and routes that were crowdsourced by the community in the first place. I’m not paying $300 a year to buy back data that I personally contribute to. There are gazillion similar apps, with slight variations, and the more powerful ones look like something straight from 2000s. Instead of a pay-to-access model, a sustainable consumer map ecosystem could look like Wikipedia, or better yet, a peer-to-peer network like IPFS where you trade compute (route calculation) and storage. It could be a barter: you get to use the collective resources of the network because you are actively hosting tiles, routing data, or contributing metadata back into it. But that requires a critical mass to take off (like bitcoin did). OpenStreetMap is great, but what we actually need is a modern consumer frontend built on top of an open, distributed layer: decentralized public registry for user-generated content, keeping your routes and trip itineraries discoverable by any client app rather than locked inside VC-backed silos. Furthermore, current open-source projects miss a lot of quality-of-life features that commercial apps have—things like crowd-sourced opinions and reviews about places, public transit schedules, real-time traffic alerting and reporting, location sharing, street-view, and dependable speed limits during navigation. Without these active, live-data layers, the map looks stale and lagging behind the real world. The user interface also needs to shift from a passive viewport to a high-contribution editor. Right now, if you want to make serious geometry edits, you’re forced into JOSM. It’s hard to boot, clunky, and quite clearly has never seen a proper UI/UX designer, scaring away everyone but the most hardcore power users. I'm a person who doesn't give up easily, but when I tried adding parking zone regions for the city I gave up after 2 days of trying to make some sense of this software. A modern mobile UI should let you freehand draw a route that snaps to paths, edit regions on the fly, or drop advanced metadata — like parking restrictions — in just three obvious taps, without a steep technical learning curve. Finally, the client app itself should be a pluggable core. Instead of building every feature from scratch, it should allow users to plug in open modules for whatever they need, whether that's live public transit routing, traffic estimates, location sharing, or advanced 3D metro overlays. The data is there, and the rendering tech is there; we just need a shared, distributed network structure so companies can't charge us a premium to gate the social and metadata layers. I wish there was an EU initiative to have a fully featured app like that, unifying all the existing ones in place of N abhorrent, barely functional implementations in all of the different local public transport apps (looking at you italian AMT genova or you, french IDF mobilites).