I yearn for the days when we just have functional apps and no fragmented drama or centralised corporate shit.
I’m not sure what the problem with Organic maps is. I think dividing the community is generally a bad idea.
Here’s the open letter from maintainers.
Summary (direct from the linked post):
Community contributors to Organic Maps have expressed serious concerns about the project’s governance, transparency, and the potential for shareholder profit at the expense of the community. They are calling for a shift to a nonprofit structure, greater inclusivity in decision-making, and financial transparency, and are considering starting a new project if these issues are not addressed.
Honestly I could care less if they make money or not.
Right now we really need some strong competition in the maps space.
How much less could you care?
Enshittification like it happened with maps.me is coming to organic maps?
Probably not for now, but the main devs displayed some bad behavior iirc, so this might be an early fork in preperation for what might be on the horizon.
This is what happened:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MAPS.ME_to_Organic_Maps/OM_Crisis
What induced the fork? Out of the loop, apparently.
Here’s an open letter to the Organic Maps Shareholders with the most info:
https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/Which is referenced in the article here:
https://news.itsfoss.com/organic-maps-fork-comaps/And discussed on the OpenSource community here:
https://lemmy.world/post/30461779Basically some drama went down between the devs.
- Organic Maps has remained an LLC instead of transitioning to a Nonprofit.
- The projects finances have not been made public (they’re not required as an LLC) and there are concerns about how that money is being used.
- There was a decision made to include Kayak affiliate links in the app: https://web.archive.org/web/20250602163403/https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/pull/6523
- The current board only consists of 3 people: Roman (@rtsisyk), Viktor (@vng), and Alexander (@biodranik). Major decisions can’t be made if only 1 person objects.
- The code for their map download service was closed sourced when an MIT license was removed and there were concerns about Organic Maps keeping in line with its open source values: https://web.archive.org/web/20250523094656/https://github.com/orgs/organicmaps/discussions/9837#discussioncomment-11569196
- When these concerns were raised, Alexander (@biodranik) revoked Roman’s (@rtsisyk) access https://web.archive.org/web/20250427142515/https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/pull/9860
- The situation was resolved about a week later with the code for the map download service becoming public and With Roman’s access being restored.
Edit: ‘to’ the shareholders, not from
Honestly none of that seems all that bad. Unless they start actively doing something very harmful I don’t see any reason not to use Organic maps.
None of it is “that bad”. However its understandable if contributors want to separate out and have a more open governance.
As long as they keep the licenses open where both projects can pick and choose. Some forks do so “maliciously” and change licenses to prevent upstream from pulling changes back.
- Organic Maps has remained an LLC instead of transitioning to a Nonprofit.
