I used to use wikiloc, but most of the things that offer which were the most interesting things were by paying, so I think that it could be some opportunity for using these maps and vibe coding for creating something spectacular!
> 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.
You can look up who the contributors are, e.g. in their open-source repo: https://codeberg.org/comaps
There are also issues and projects with lots of discussions about what to prioritize, etc.
So, bashing that “community” is too fuzzy is perhaps not very warranted. (Although I guess they should add a section “Who makes CoMaps?” to the FAQs or so.)
The fact that OM leadership pulled the same open-closed game twice is telling. Many open source contributors who donated their private time and effort to the project just didn't want to do that any more when OM leadership started the game again.
That's the main reason they forked and started a new project.
To clarify - this quote pertains to the Organic Maps situation
> 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.
CoMaps had been started because Organic Maps shareholders were not interested fixing those governance and transparency issues.
Anyone here has been using coMaps and care to share their experience, especially in comparison to OrganicMaps?
My only complaint to OrganicMaps was the slowness to calculate a direction, which in part is certainly because the path is calculated locally instead of some cloud server but old garmin devices also weren't online and can calculate paths on far less powerful hardware. So I'm guessing there is room for improvement on that part.
My biggest issue with OrganicMaps is that the search isn't very good. It really struggles to find my destination sometimes. That's the one thing I'm afraid Google will always be better at.
I was talking in deep in the weed OSM signal group and apparently its a split between the address data not being present, and OrganicMap / CoMap being bugged.
The way to triage is asking nominatim, the geocoder from OSM. If it can resolve : its on the client side, if not, its a data problem.
I'm just parroting here. Happy to learn more.
This is THE only issue I have with those OSM client ( I don't care about traffic )
For good (server) search, one needs many layers (Photon, Pelias with OpenAdresses, Overpass, in-house pmtiles, etc.) using many DBs, each needing server ressources or expensive paid APIs.
It's obvioulsy expensive in terms of ops + dev, but also just to host.
It can't scale with only 0,0001 % of users donating to the app.
Fortunately, NLNet's there to fund work, but it's still nonethless only a tenth of what would be needed.
Plus map applications and general search engines don't talk to each other... I don't know why, but it is so. Maybe because all the well-known search engines are closed-source ?
It doesn't take so much to enable a good server search on top of OSM + openaddresses.
Local search will always be slow and bad.
But server search doesn't need that much. It's just that OS initiatives are severely understaffed. OS apps that have a Photon instance are already rare to find. Let's not talk about having an Overpass instance...
What is very hard to reproduce is Google's place review data.
I just checked (in CoMaps): A restaurant around the corner is listed as "Pizza, Vegan, no wheelchair access, outdoor seating". No opening hours, though (but other places have).
This can be due to missing address information in OSM. I also find the grouping sometimes odd, e.g. searching for a street, the place names are from one level higher.
Comaps and organic maps are very similar (they forked very recently). The only difference I can think of from the top of my mind is that organic maps is not fully open source (map files and generator are proprietary) and has some kayak sponsored suggestions/reviews
I used to use OrganicMaps. When coMaps forked, I changed to it. From my perspective there were no negatives. If anything, coMaps looked to be under more active development.
Been using Comaps for a while, mainly for cycling, and it works very well. Before that I used also organicmaps and it was fine as well but I think made a few more mistakes in routing. That said, obviously this is not a parallel test but rather successive. Of course the split happened with drama, but I just like the Comaps vibe and am happy with it.
I prefer CoMaps' tile styling, they did a bunch of updates to it early on to differentiate it from OrganicMaps, IMO it's much nicer.
CoMaps also has a better system for distributing map data now which isn't bound to app updates. Not sure if this has made its way back to the other app, but it's quite nice.
While I do use mapping programs for directions, I more often use them for a more accurate estimate of time and traffic density. I haven't looked very hard, but I haven't seen any OpenStreetMap data or equivalent that shows "Real" travel times and traffic density.
I use CoMaps, it works great. You get notified in the app to download the updated maps you selected every 2 weeks or so. Could be wildly different than that, just what I notice.
It's timing estimates are often 5-15 minutes off Apple Maps, which I find accurate, on ~two hour drives, but I imagine it depends on the traffic.
To improve OpenStreetMap, which CoMaps uses as the data source, I use StreetComplete[1]–it puts quests around your location which ask you questions, it's user-friendly. A thoughtful feature is that it lets you download data in a location on wifi, in case you didn't want to use cellular.
OpenStreetMap is like Wikipedia for mapping, anyone can contribute and improve the map, and StreetComplete is like Pokemon Go in the sense that you walk around and complete quests, except StreetComplete helps humanity, while Pokemon Go[2]....
I should check to see if I can notice my StreetComplete edits getting onto CoMaps. Might be hard because they're often about accessibility at crosswalks. Seriously, is there anything they don't collect?
Last I checked, not with StreetComplete. But the OSM wiki has a table of Android apps https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android which column "Record tracks" can be sorted by, to see which apps have that feature.
How I've done similar before is to record a GPS trace with an OsmAnd plugin, upload it to OSM servers, import it as an overlay in the web-based editor on desktop, and used that and satellite imagery as reference to draw in the missing trail.
In a pinch you can also record a trace and edit directly on it in the field with the Android app Vespucci, but its UX is clunky and much less friendly to new contributors than the web-based iD editor.
As the other commenter mentioned the web editor is probably the most beginner-friendly editor. It might seem a little daunting but it's actually not that difficult to edit OSM. When you save your change there's an option to request a review of it. That'll get an experienced contributor to take a look at it and help clear up any mistakes.
OSM also has a public database of GPS tracks that contributors use to aid in mapping. Even just walking the trails with GPS tracking on and then uploading the tracks to OSM without doing anything else is a valuable contribution that will allow other contributors to map the trails at some point in the future.
If you are in the U.S. please each out to OSMUS, they are amazing and can connect you with trail mapping resources. There is a vibrant community of folks keeping our trails mapped!
You can edit existing trails, but directly adding new ones is not intended. What you can do is create a GPS track, and then upload it with a note describing the problem.
I use the app Vesspucci for actual editing, it works well (but larger changes to OSM is a "full PC" kind of task). Notes from StreetComplete show up on a TODO list in the app.
Exactly, this theory is absurd because they would never help society, they could just use Google Maps/ other proprietary data.
By improving OSM, it allows people to use privacy respecting maps like CoMaps which work offline. I'm sure intelligence agencies are pretty happy with the ability to ask Google where any google account is at any time.
Billions of people us Google maps, is that not disturbing that google knows where that many people are?
Yes!
Accessability quests I often see are:
- Do these steps have a ramp? (with several ramp-type options)
- How many steps are here?
- Do these steps have a handrail?
- Is there tactile paving at the top and bottom of these steps?
- Does this crossing have tactile paving?
- Are there sound signals for the blind here?
- Do these traffic lights have a button to request a walk signal?
- What's the height of the curb at this crossing?
- Is this place wheelchair accessible?
If you want to do more advanced accessibility mapping, also have a look at https://mapcomplete.org/onwheels - same concept, but different implementation. Also OpenStreetMap based, so data you add there is shared amongst CoMaps, StreetComplete, ...
This is great, I'm working on a project called AccessPath for detailed accessibility review of a place. Currently the prototype[1] is using Google Maps but I will be moving on to OpenStreet Maps for obvious reasons.
Thanks to you folks, Street Complete will also come handy to make places more accessible.
Depends a lot on where you live. My village is pretty fresh cuz I update it lol. My impression is that it's quite good in western Europe, might take a month in major US cities, and probably years old in most other places. I think Indonesia, Israel, and Japan are decent as well.
OpenStreetMap is the underlying map database, and intentionally neither any specific engine nor website/app. CoMaps is an app to view (and edit) OpenStreetMap, and has its own rendering and routing engines, and map CDN.
This is correct. Tools might however display them slightly different, have different update schedules or make different cartographic choices (e.g. not showing node networks or something)
Mapy.com does that really well [0] (not affiliated). Not open source though. It uses mix of sources - OSM included - to render map (best render imo - especially the "outdoor" layer) and they are pretty large contributor to OSM in Europe. In free tier you can have one country downloaded for offline use. Sharing .gpx is no problem. Traffic data only in Central Europe.
Tangential, but does anyone know if an app exists that that the video feed of your phone with the GPS loc and reads the signs from the road and compare it to OSM to update it if necessary?
Let’s be clear, in the end I use Waze for routing due to the traffic updates, but I see sometimes outdated speed limits and know OSM is one of its sources.
Oh I don't have a link but there was a project just like this someone hacked together a while back. I think it used Gemini live or something and as you walked and scanned things it would suggest changed to the map. It was a rough demo but seemed promising.
I've been wanting to do something similar but just by taking photos of menus and updating the POI with new hours/website/phone etc
I remember seeing something like this where it could identify signs and things, but the quality from what I recall was not great (could be way off and have many duplicates). I might be remembering Mapillary, which has a Map data button at the top left and seems to show signs [0]. I don't think it auto-updates OSM based on these data.
This is what I use in my main GrapheneOS profile. I still have a dedicated profile for Google Maps though as I still have not been able to give up their greater datasets (i.e. traffic) in all cases.
Decent app though. I saw someone here mention proprietary code but I wouldn't worry about it, just install the F-Droid version. That's why I use F-Droid - to guarantee I don't get proprietary blobs.
To be honest, I use Organic Maps over CoMaps simply because Organic Maps is available in Accrescent (which is in turn provided by the GrapheneOS App Store), and CoMaps is not. Both Google Play and F‐Droid are just enough of a hassle (and I mildly dislike both of them) to keep me on the map app that doesn’t require either one.
Proprietary parts had been mentioned in the context of Organic Maps - their map generator is partially closed source, and even OM F-Droid build includes some proprietary assets.
In CoMaps we are serious about being 100% FOSS and this is one of the reasons we've forked from OM.
perfect timing. i was using OpenStreetMap for my ios running app and I found out that there is a cap so I ended up switching to a paid solution and have been trying to build something like comaps by downloading all the tiles
Is it possible to change the maps' colors and contrasts now? Last time I checked I thought the lower contrast and washed-out colors compared to Organic Maps were a poor choice so I switched back to OM.
One of the main things that keeps me from using essentially all OSM-based mapping apps is that search seems incredibly bad. I can't blend city and name, road and category, can't usually filter by features or open time, and results are almost always something like:
- a result 500 feet away that sounds nothing like what you searched for
- a result 23 miles away that shares one word but nothing else
- a result 572 miles away that has a business name that contains exactly what was searched
- ... nowhere is there an exact full-name match that is 1.3 miles away, which can easily be found by exploring the map
Are there any apps that do this better? Android and desktop (e.g. linux) ideally. I'd love to use them more, but I've had endless problems using them. Good map data is kinda useless if it can't be retrieved, and trying to work around it by panning around and manually saving a hundred or so favorites really kinda sucks.
True, although I do also have a lot of problems with Google Maps. Particularly, when I search for a small town 100km away, and instead it brings up a medium sized down in the USA. Or even more ridiculous cases, like I slightly got the name of a business wrong, so it went with a different business in the USA.
Could you try https://cartes.app and share your search terms and expectations ? We're using Photon, an OpenSearch search engine. We've build a dictionary of place categories to help in-browser with FuseJS.
Also thinking about using embeddings to complement this.
Cartes search and user experience was surprisingly good! Well done. I was caught off guard by having the requirement for a Bluesky account for reviews instead of something open source/federated but wasn't able to read the explanation page as it was french only, but I think the international version is still work in progress, so I'll gladly return in the future.
We're not using Bluesky, but Atproto ;)
So place reviews is federated and open-source : we use Eurosky/Mu.social daily for our social accounts.
Also, Bluesky itself is open-source.
> but I think the international version is still work in progress, so I'll gladly return in the future.
same location + "valentine" shows... house icons? and a business icon in other states and countries. (top result is apparently a "commune" in France. not sure I'd use a house icon for that tbh)
same location + "valentine coffee" shows good substring matches for the business name (3 results) and two results in other countries.
same location + "val coffee" (exploring substring behavior) also finds it... but it also shows "Stone Creek Coffee"? what part of that matches "val" but not "coffee" on its own?
Thanks, it lets me understand the bugs that make coffees impossible to be found for you. The first problem is that for performance reasons, we don't enable category discovery and search at high zoom. They only appear at zoom 13 (https://cartes.app/#13.7/43.04398/-87.911), and your link was at zoom 12.41. This category suggestion would have let you show all coffee places on the map. But not yet filter your searches to this category only, that will be a game-changer feature we're working on.
The zoom limitation is a known problem, but probably worse in the US where cities are less dense than in Europe. I'll prioritize it, thanks.
2nd problem is that the "coffee" word doesn't trigger the coffee category. It should, I'll investigate too.
On your link, two Valentine coffee are shown on the map with the query "valentine", but none are in the search results list, and they're on the edges of the map. Interesting bug : probably a side effect of adding address search last week, I'll investigate.
You're probably our first US-user test, thanks again :)
I do have resist-fingerprinting on, thanks! I'll have to poke at that, I'm curious about the technical reasons. A dialog would help, this is the first I've heard of it and I don't mind exceptions for sites that aren't injecting javascript on billions of unrelated pages.
>and they're on the edges of the map
I don't think they were very edge-y from what I remember... but I'll double check. And will get a screenshot if I disagree - maybe it's something about window size or display density.
>we don't enable category discovery and search at high zoom.
Yeah, I've seen that in a few apps. It's kinda fine when zoomed far out as it's not like you'd be getting a representative distribution, and it might flood more specific (and intended) results out. It broadly makes sense, though I mostly see people confused and frustrated by it in-person (there's rarely any way to tell it has happened).
But if that category search is not enabled, why doesn't it find business name matches?
Also I think that zoom level is almost certainly worth allowing (not necessarily defaulting to) category search. In a dense city it'll overwhelm things, but in much of the USA that might find 2-3 things, if any at all. Maybe it's worth blending in the number of results you'd get if it was enabled, when deciding? Or do you also do that?
Prioritisation on search behaviors is super hard, I definitely understand that... but that's why user-controlled options are useful. OSM apps nigh-universally seem to be removing that as the years go by, and the end result is that it's almost unusable because it doesn't let you find things you know exist. Google mitigates it with enormous amounts of ad money feeding recommendation systems to show 10 decent results out of 100,000 matches, but I don't think that's worth emulating, and they still have a ton of optional controls for filtering. OSM data is convoluted and messy and hard to make convenient, but not having any control at all seems obviously worse to me.
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Lest this all seem like ranting / an upset user: I just have lots of opinions about mapping! And I'm broadly rather unhappy with existing apps. I'm literally always glad to see new attempts, and I don't expect everything to be built for me, so thank you for trying things :) I'm entirely happy to say a ton more or just not be your target audience and stick to technical stuff.
> I don't think they were very edge-y from what I remember... but I'll double check. And will get a screenshot if I disagree - maybe it's something about window size or display density.
For some reasons, the results drawn on the map are more numerous than the ones we show in the result list. I've raised an issue to investigate this. https://codeberg.org/cartes/web/issues/2480
> But if that category search is not enabled, why doesn't it find business name matches? And why are the results far outside the viewing window?
Good question. It's a Photon (our search API) problem as far as I know. We probably did set a local search ponderation too low for this use case.
In case the user chose the (default) "search here" option, we could also add a proximity ranking.
I do agree with your last big paragraph : we don't have Google's budget, hence the "search here" option which already solved lots of dead ends. Thanks a lot for this discussion !
Does it just use "here" / viewing box as a bias, not a hard cutoff? Personally I definitely expect "here" to mean "absolutely no results outside my window under any circumstances" (with some room for fuzziness with different screen aspect ratios, though even then I expect fewer results, not more). I'm not familiar with what Photon does tho, and it's not particularly clear from a quick skim of the site/readme.
> Good map data is kinda useless if it can't be retrieved, and trying to work around it by panning around and manually saving a hundred or so favorites really kinda sucks.
There are different ways of using maps. A lot of the stuff I do with mapping apps I really do just pan and zoom, and that works for me.
Search is a really tough problem in OSM for a few reasons, but I think a lot it stems from bad address parsing.
I’ve been working on geocoder which uses a trained model to parse and classify address queries into a tokenized form. In addition to being more accurate than traditional rule-based parsing, this approach also gives the search engine more to work with beyond the tokenized boundaries of each word. The model also attaches provenance annotations to the address components, allowing the geocoder to have a better understanding of the geographic hierarchy of the components makes sense, rather than matching a string in a database.
The code is changing fast but you can try it out entirely in your browser here! Let me know if you’d like to see any specific features not on the roadmap :)
I mean it when I say that's "maybe slightly better than average". When it gets extra weird I generally go check the OSM node data out of curiosity, and fairly often I find searches returning things where literally no field at all matches any word I searched for. I don't really think that's an address parsing issue.
There is a subway overlay.
And there is marked hiking routes overlay being in development.
There is a also an outdoor-focused map style (some people call it a layer too).
Think of it as a very stripped down and opinionated version of OsmAnd. It lacks a lot of power features, but is extremely fast and all of the options are easily available and work out of the box. So it's great for everyday use (especially in cities with a lot of POIs) but not as good for in depth travel and route planning.
For example, I've used F-Droid OsmAnd extensively when planning my trip to Japan, because its guides, WikiData and Wikipedia integration are godsend for finding interesting places to visit, but used CoMaps when I was there to look things up and build routes. I'm also exclusively using OsmAnd for writing GNSS tracks because I can fine tune the parameters of measurements it captures.
I just opened CoMaps. The first thing that happened was that it zoomed out from my previous location in another city, and then zoomed in on my current position.
I use CoMaps, it works like a charm on GrapheneOS + Android Auto.
I have also contributed to the OpenStreetMap by adding POI and requesting logic to be changed.
The only major issue which I got used to but sucks, is the search when it does not involved famous places or streets or both.
Streets will be shown as minor or major and alike, I do need to use Google Maps Browser version to find the place, and the on CoMaps manually navigate to said place.
But the fact that I get a map update a week, sometimes two maps update a week which other apps will take months and subscription, that alone is worth hustle.
I've read both Organic Maps thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794446 (as it's my favorite map app I use for years around the world, and I'm an active OSM contributor as well) which quickly became overrun with CoMaps followers trash-talking about OM, now this thread appears.
What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
All the talk is not about functionality of the app or anything which is actually important to users - it's all basically complaints about some kind of _internal drama_, add some misleading stuff about "dying project" or "lost community" from some commenters. So many cries about "ads" which are not actually ads but affiliate links in hotels POI which nobody clicks anyway, it's so mild it's just weird to lament about, at least I as a long time user see no issue at all.
I can advise CoMaps community to focus on developing the app which can actually make real users migrate and use because of functionality, speed or other things that matter, instead of making your community look toxic because of this trash-talk. Show real improvements in comparison with OM - make live maps updates like OSMAnd, make bookmark folders with specific colors tied to it, make app barely eat any battery, make convenient and powerful interface to add data to the map - then people will move. But for now Organic Maps is totally fine and many people like me see no reason to move from it anywhere.
I dont know anything about this app besides your framing of "out-of-nowhere community builds an app" but am sometimes suspicious of nation states building these types of open source project forks. It's so easy now, and the cost seems incredibly low, to get into very intimate workflows (of very specific types of people).
We've already seen attackers simulate whole communities for attacks on individuals, and I'm just wondering when we're going to see someone simulate a whole open source community in a longer play, as an kickstart on a longer term strategy of compromise
To what end? I can think of 10 reasons immediately off the top of my head, but it’s far easier to fill existing open source projects with agent contributors for most of them.
Do you really need someone to rhyme out why state actors do what they do?
When something is only a few thousand dollars away from us in "the adjacent possible", I hardly think one needs to be a conspiracy theorist to suggest we consider it...?
I don't have the means to research, but certainly there would be ample resources for such an attack in certain spaces??? Manufacturing social signal is hugely valuable
I feel like governments have so many options for hacking that forking open source and dealing with all that is likely more work than whatever outcome they hope for.
> We've already seen attackers simulate whole communities for attacks on individuals
I think we saw the "opensource app go rogue for financial interests" and all of its related drama much more than state actors faking communities. So, Occam's razor applies here, IMO.
> What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
I don't think you read enough, I saw plenty of real problems with Organic maps described.
Affiliate links being included in the app, despite community objections? The lead dev using donations to pay for holidays? Those are a couple that come to mind.
If the donation is framed as a single developer benefitting it should be fine, but at least when I was donating that was framed as donations to the project which suggests something else.
I'm fine with this use, rewarding a developer, but neither was this transparent nor was it fair for all others working on the project (and supposedly getting cost claims refused).
Guys in OM core dev team paying for hosting, app accounts, legal questions, etc(AFAIK, they subsidize all that from their own money because donations are not enough).
On top of that, they contribute years of man-hours for free to the project. I believe it is completely fair for hard-working dev to use donated money to have some rest.
Imo, consumers of all that good are too spoiled to also require strict discipline or transparency or even hating original authors(as seen on HN).
Hosting etc. expenses are a minor fraction compared to OM's donations inflow. And its enough to hire devs, the first dev was hired more than two years ago, but they have been hiding this fact to look more poor and attract more donations.
Even long-term active contributors have been denied even totals information about donations and got to know about first hire by chance about a year since the fact.
Given the nature of the problems with OM, this makes sense. The dispute is about governance and money, which is something that only the people involved in development will deeply care about. It makes sense they're the main people talking about it.
I’m an Organic Maps user and from a cursory glance I can see no reason to use CoMaps instead, it looks like the same app and I’d wish they’d make an attempt to clearer differentiate themselves since this will be an obvious question.
> it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps
How did you evaluate that? I use CoMaps, I am not a contributor to it, but in the comments I read I do not remember seeing many people specifying clearly if they are or not contributors (there might have been, but it did not feel like "mostly").
For me CoMaps worked well in the ~6 months for my use-cases (with some issues with the search as everybody reports for both projects). I like much better the site of CoMaps than of OrganicMaps, which influenced a bit my decision to use it. I also like they are hosted on Codeberg than on github.
About evaluation - you are right, they don’t say they are contributors in their comments explicitly (which they probably should do), but it was quite telling in one case, when a person trash-talked about OM clearly without proof, but then if you go to its profile and visit a personal website from there - turns out that they are a contributor.
I totally expect that’s is also the case with other commenters, but it’s fair to say it’s mostly a guess on my side as for most people you can’t say for sure as they don’t have GitHubs linked to the profile. But I’m 100% sure there are several contributors commenting there, especially taking into account how many CoMaps comments and mentions are there and overall popularity of this app, which is not very big.
I don't really think it's primarily the CoMaps devs and contributors warning others about OrganicMaps. It's mostly OpenStreetMap contributors (e.g., mappers) like myself who followed the relevant discussions and events and decided that the community is better off routing around the problem.
OrganicMaps could be the best app there is in terms of functionality (it isn't), but if there are significant issues with their governance they are harmful to the broader OpenStreetMap community.
So we recommend CoMaps and OsmAnd, and carry on mapping.
> made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
FYI I've been the most active non-shareholder contributor of Organic Maps for 3+ years. You won't see me or other ex-OM contributors who've left to start CoMaps in OM GH contributor stats anymore, because OM had banned us (and nowadays they also ban users in their chats and SM accounts for just mentioning CoMaps). But you can still see our PRs, e.g. I've authored Outdoor map style amongst many other improvements.
You're right though that CoMaps had been founded because of things like governance, transparency, community and FOSS values, while many users are just interested in features (and hence often prefer Maps.ME even, which is like 10x more popular than OM looking at downloads).
Well, after you intentionally leaked the map generation code (which was not intended to be published) before creating the fork, it's not surprising that OM banned you. How do your actions align with governance, transparency, community and values?
What do you mean, leaked? Isn't this a FOSS project? Why would it have secret code?
Also "not surprising that OM banned you" - what process of adjudication was there before the project decided to ban someone who, by his description at least, is a key contributor? How was this person found guilty, and who decided on the penalty?
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PS - I'm not involved with any of OM, CoMaps, Maps.ME, and actually just found out the first two even exist.
Not involved in OM or CoMaps at all; but involved in OpenStreetMap.
> What do you mean, leaked? Isn't this a FOSS project?
The client-app (CoMaps/Organic Maps) indeed is fully FLOSS. It uses OSM data, but that data is packaged into a specific and optimized format. The code _generating_ this optimized data (and serving it to the clients) was kept proprietary.
Hmm, keeping the server-side code proprietary is rather underhanded. Was the license of the "leaked" code actually proprietary? Anyway, sounds like the "leak" was in the public interest.
> you intentionally leaked the map generation code (which was not intended to be published)
In short:
It was perfectly legal to publish this code (Apache 2.0 repo and DCO signed agreeing its a public contribution) and OM shareholders have always claimed that the map generator code is open and people are free to fork it.
However it turned out they were holding back a bunch of commits to prevent people from easily forking the project while maintaining still that the commits are FOSS and will be eventually pushed to the main repo, its just they're "experimental" still (but in fact they had been used in prod for a few years already).
We made an agreement to fix this discrepancy and push the commits to the public repo, so that we can honestly state that Organic Maps is truly an open source project with no tricks and reservations. This has happened several months before the conflict between the shareholders and community contributors.
And indeed a good part of the commits had been pushed public during next months. And when I published the rest of the commits OM shareholders knew about it of course and again they didn't say anything against it.
However after about a month (after negotiations to improve OM governance has failed and ex-contributors, me included, have started CoMaps) they have started accusing me of "stealing" those commits.
Also me and other CoMaps contributors had been actually banned several months later after they've started their accusations, so the ban is not directly because of the accusations.
At first we've been having discussion and arguing about the matter and related topics in OM chats. But people saw their very shaky arguments and how they refute their own previous words about openness of the maps generator etc.
So then they started just deleting such discussions and eventually banning CoMaps contributors.
And nowadays they censor all mentions of CoMaps in their chats and SMs and often ban users who dared to mention us.
Petty bureaucrats misusing their privileges to ban key contributors from FOSS projects is a recurring tale I'm afraid. I've seen this happen with Thunderbird, and later also with LibreOffice (well, The Document Foundation to be exact). It is ridiculous and frustrating, especially since most other contributors and users remain passive and let these things just happen (even when they don't agree), typically because they don't want to put in the effort, or to risk their cordial relations with those in power. I very much sympathize with your predicament.
I'm honestly confused why OSMAnd~ (from F-Droid) is never mentioned. I've tried both Organic Maps and CoMaps and I can't find a single reason to use them, OSMAnd has a genuinely insane featureset for a free software app that keeps surprising me every time I use it.
From telling you exactly which maps you need to calculate a route, to rich bookmarking options and grouping, all the different builtin map modes like boating and skiing, incredible customization of map looks and highlights making it possible to make e.g. a train mode, or a highly customized hiking mode, as well as detailed insights into recorded trails.
The other openstreetmaps app alternatives render faster, and imo have some better defaults in places, but with OSMAnd being so customizable, I can have my cake and eat it too.
It's not only the trash-talking, it actually gets even more interesting. - The person behind CoMaps, @pastk, used to be an Organic Maps contributor. Because of that, he had access to an unpublished piece of code that was used to generate maps. OM founders say that code was not published to protect the app from getting easily cloned (kind of a secret sauce component), so it was intended to stay private. Though, @pastk, before creating his fork, exploited his access to publish that code, so he could reuse it. OM founders tried to challenge that move, but @pastk responses were like try sue me.
That fact alone makes me stay away from CoMaps. You can find many interesting details about this conflict in the Russian Telegram group: https://t.me/OrganicMapsRu
I was the same, but did end up switching due to features. I'm not sure I remember which sealed the deal, but I remember at least being able to remove/change the left-most button that just points to an About screen IIRC, and updating maps without going through the app store? And just the fact that improvements to Organic Maps also seem to make it to CoMaps, whereas I don't think they flow in the other direction.
I have no stake in the game other than that I have donated to both projects, but CoMaps seems to have a more sustainable path forward as true FOSS, no need for more drama. Having read some of the discussions I understand that there's also at least one of the original developers on board, so reference to an abstract community without experience seems to be a bit misleading.
I can imagine it's frustrating to see your own work continued by others, when you were hoping to benefit and continue the work and all this drama helps no one. Still better if both sides would avoid the ad hominem attacks and conspiracy theories about the other side.
Long time OM user, just installed CoMaps. Basically the same app, except a few additional features. Increased label size is very nice! I struggle to read street names in OM while on bike.
197 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 77.5 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793684
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794575
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.
That's the main reason they forked and started a new project.
> 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.
CoMaps had been started because Organic Maps shareholders were not interested fixing those governance and transparency issues.
My only complaint to OrganicMaps was the slowness to calculate a direction, which in part is certainly because the path is calculated locally instead of some cloud server but old garmin devices also weren't online and can calculate paths on far less powerful hardware. So I'm guessing there is room for improvement on that part.
I was talking in deep in the weed OSM signal group and apparently its a split between the address data not being present, and OrganicMap / CoMap being bugged.
The way to triage is asking nominatim, the geocoder from OSM. If it can resolve : its on the client side, if not, its a data problem.
I'm just parroting here. Happy to learn more.
This is THE only issue I have with those OSM client ( I don't care about traffic )
It's obvioulsy expensive in terms of ops + dev, but also just to host.
It can't scale with only 0,0001 % of users donating to the app.
Fortunately, NLNet's there to fund work, but it's still nonethless only a tenth of what would be needed.
Plus map applications and general search engines don't talk to each other... I don't know why, but it is so. Maybe because all the well-known search engines are closed-source ?
Local search will always be slow and bad.
But server search doesn't need that much. It's just that OS initiatives are severely understaffed. OS apps that have a Photon instance are already rare to find. Let's not talk about having an Overpass instance...
What is very hard to reproduce is Google's place review data.
It's golden to enable good search.
fake anyways (quite easy to get negative comments deleted), and even for bad reviews.
Best look elsewhere or not at all.
What's important is people talking about "has air conditioner" in a hotel review or "has vegan" in a restaurant. OSM has none of this data.
It's a for-profit venture that accepts donations. That's sketchy. Management also seems to have prior Kremlin links. Which is sketchy.
I don’t understand why it is “sketchy”. Also do you have any proof on “Kremlin links”?
You mind sharing links / sources / etc. ?
CoMaps also has a better system for distributing map data now which isn't bound to app updates. Not sure if this has made its way back to the other app, but it's quite nice.
It's timing estimates are often 5-15 minutes off Apple Maps, which I find accurate, on ~two hour drives, but I imagine it depends on the traffic.
To improve OpenStreetMap, which CoMaps uses as the data source, I use StreetComplete[1]–it puts quests around your location which ask you questions, it's user-friendly. A thoughtful feature is that it lets you download data in a location on wifi, in case you didn't want to use cellular.
OpenStreetMap is like Wikipedia for mapping, anyone can contribute and improve the map, and StreetComplete is like Pokemon Go in the sense that you walk around and complete quests, except StreetComplete helps humanity, while Pokemon Go[2]....
I should check to see if I can notice my StreetComplete edits getting onto CoMaps. Might be hard because they're often about accessibility at crosswalks. Seriously, is there anything they don't collect?
[1] https://streetcomplete.app/
[2] Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487029 26 days ago 317 comments
How I've done similar before is to record a GPS trace with an OsmAnd plugin, upload it to OSM servers, import it as an overlay in the web-based editor on desktop, and used that and satellite imagery as reference to draw in the missing trail.
In a pinch you can also record a trace and edit directly on it in the field with the Android app Vespucci, but its UX is clunky and much less friendly to new contributors than the web-based iD editor.
If you added a gopro and SLAM to the GPS trace and imported USGS topographical data I wonder if you couldn't fully automate the process.
In areas where 3dep is recent, you can usually see a trail under forest cover. It's pretty great.
OSM also has a public database of GPS tracks that contributors use to aid in mapping. Even just walking the trails with GPS tracking on and then uploading the tracks to OSM without doing anything else is a valuable contribution that will allow other contributors to map the trails at some point in the future.
https://openstreetmap.us/
I use the app Vesspucci for actual editing, it works well (but larger changes to OSM is a "full PC" kind of task). Notes from StreetComplete show up on a TODO list in the app.
By improving OSM, it allows people to use privacy respecting maps like CoMaps which work offline. I'm sure intelligence agencies are pretty happy with the ability to ask Google where any google account is at any time.
Billions of people us Google maps, is that not disturbing that google knows where that many people are?
Disclaimer: I make this
Thanks to you folks, Street Complete will also come handy to make places more accessible.
[1]https://accesspath.world/
Open source software often moves comparatively slowly, of course, but I believe they're making decent progress.
i think one thing that's going for google is the network effects and what it's able to do.
Even for routing google maps still fail with some one way streets directions.
AllTrails has its whole review system sitting on top of course.
So nice to be able to do that locally and just send a .gpx file
Being able to download maps, tap to set destination, and see elevation all for free makes it top tier.
[0]: https://mapy.com
I agree that the outdoor layer render is probably the best there is!
Let’s be clear, in the end I use Waze for routing due to the traffic updates, but I see sometimes outdated speed limits and know OSM is one of its sources.
I've been wanting to do something similar but just by taking photos of menus and updating the POI with new hours/website/phone etc
[0] https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=52.4758193487485&lng=-1.8...
Decent app though. I saw someone here mention proprietary code but I wouldn't worry about it, just install the F-Droid version. That's why I use F-Droid - to guarantee I don't get proprietary blobs.
In CoMaps we are serious about being 100% FOSS and this is one of the reasons we've forked from OM.
A cap for downloading rendered tiles from osm.org? That exists, but is quite generous.
Other (free) options are https://openfreemap.org/ or https://versatiles.org/ to generate your own tiles.
Look into protomaps instead. One ~100GB archive for the entire world
Yeah, it really loves to suggest US options.
Also thinking about using embeddings to complement this.
We're not using Bluesky, but Atproto ;) So place reviews is federated and open-source : we use Eurosky/Mu.social daily for our social accounts. Also, Bluesky itself is open-source.
> but I think the international version is still work in progress, so I'll gladly return in the future.
Yes sorry, we're working on it, daily !
https://cartes.app/#8.61/37.5261/-121.7338 constant up and down movement at any middle zoom level, e.g. this one. zoomed far out or far in (~1km or so visible) it's stable, e.g. https://cartes.app/?allez=San+Francisco+Bay%7Cr9451753%7C-12... moves most of the screen up and down, while https://cartes.app/?allez=San+Francisco+Bay%7Cr9451753%7C-12... is stable. (this appears to be the case roughly anywhere, this is just an example)
for below, all have "here" selected (not "everywhere"):
https://cartes.app/#12.41/43.0435/-87.89962 + "coffee" selected: shows city names in other states, and two places in Iraq.
same location + "valentine" shows... house icons? and a business icon in other states and countries. (top result is apparently a "commune" in France. not sure I'd use a house icon for that tbh)
same location + "valentine coffee" shows good substring matches for the business name (3 results) and two results in other countries.
same location + "val coffee" (exploring substring behavior) also finds it... but it also shows "Stone Creek Coffee"? what part of that matches "val" but not "coffee" on its own?
same location + "vendetta" finds 3 good results, e.g. https://cartes.app/?allez=Vendetta+Coffee+Bar%7Cn11268671206... , but why does this work when "valentine" does not?
so... pretty normal results for open-source OSM apps afaict.
The shaking is probably caused by an aggressive option in Firefox : see this issue https://codeberg.org/cartes/web/issues/2095.
We can't really act on this, it appears to break a lot of websites :/ Maybe we should try to auto-detect it and show a dialog to the user.
> for below, all have "here" selected (not "everywhere") and this same view: https://cartes.app/#12.41/43.0435/-87.89962
Thanks, it lets me understand the bugs that make coffees impossible to be found for you. The first problem is that for performance reasons, we don't enable category discovery and search at high zoom. They only appear at zoom 13 (https://cartes.app/#13.7/43.04398/-87.911), and your link was at zoom 12.41. This category suggestion would have let you show all coffee places on the map. But not yet filter your searches to this category only, that will be a game-changer feature we're working on.
The zoom limitation is a known problem, but probably worse in the US where cities are less dense than in Europe. I'll prioritize it, thanks.
2nd problem is that the "coffee" word doesn't trigger the coffee category. It should, I'll investigate too.
On your link, two Valentine coffee are shown on the map with the query "valentine", but none are in the search results list, and they're on the edges of the map. Interesting bug : probably a side effect of adding address search last week, I'll investigate.
You're probably our first US-user test, thanks again :)
>and they're on the edges of the map
I don't think they were very edge-y from what I remember... but I'll double check. And will get a screenshot if I disagree - maybe it's something about window size or display density.
>we don't enable category discovery and search at high zoom.
Yeah, I've seen that in a few apps. It's kinda fine when zoomed far out as it's not like you'd be getting a representative distribution, and it might flood more specific (and intended) results out. It broadly makes sense, though I mostly see people confused and frustrated by it in-person (there's rarely any way to tell it has happened).
But if that category search is not enabled, why doesn't it find business name matches?
Also I think that zoom level is almost certainly worth allowing (not necessarily defaulting to) category search. In a dense city it'll overwhelm things, but in much of the USA that might find 2-3 things, if any at all. Maybe it's worth blending in the number of results you'd get if it was enabled, when deciding? Or do you also do that?
Prioritisation on search behaviors is super hard, I definitely understand that... but that's why user-controlled options are useful. OSM apps nigh-universally seem to be removing that as the years go by, and the end result is that it's almost unusable because it doesn't let you find things you know exist. Google mitigates it with enormous amounts of ad money feeding recommendation systems to show 10 decent results out of 100,000 matches, but I don't think that's worth emulating, and they still have a ton of optional controls for filtering. OSM data is convoluted and messy and hard to make convenient, but not having any control at all seems obviously worse to me.
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Lest this all seem like ranting / an upset user: I just have lots of opinions about mapping! And I'm broadly rather unhappy with existing apps. I'm literally always glad to see new attempts, and I don't expect everything to be built for me, so thank you for trying things :) I'm entirely happy to say a ton more or just not be your target audience and stick to technical stuff.
For some reasons, the results drawn on the map are more numerous than the ones we show in the result list. I've raised an issue to investigate this. https://codeberg.org/cartes/web/issues/2480
> But if that category search is not enabled, why doesn't it find business name matches? And why are the results far outside the viewing window?
Good question. It's a Photon (our search API) problem as far as I know. We probably did set a local search ponderation too low for this use case.
In case the user chose the (default) "search here" option, we could also add a proximity ranking.
I do agree with your last big paragraph : we don't have Google's budget, hence the "search here" option which already solved lots of dead ends. Thanks a lot for this discussion !
There are different ways of using maps. A lot of the stuff I do with mapping apps I really do just pan and zoom, and that works for me.
I’ve been working on geocoder which uses a trained model to parse and classify address queries into a tokenized form. In addition to being more accurate than traditional rule-based parsing, this approach also gives the search engine more to work with beyond the tokenized boundaries of each word. The model also attaches provenance annotations to the address components, allowing the geocoder to have a better understanding of the geographic hierarchy of the components makes sense, rather than matching a string in a database.
The code is changing fast but you can try it out entirely in your browser here! Let me know if you’d like to see any specific features not on the roadmap :)
https://mailwoman.sister.software/
concretely, here's an example search session: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48825127
I mean it when I say that's "maybe slightly better than average". When it gets extra weird I generally go check the OSM node data out of curiosity, and fairly often I find searches returning things where literally no field at all matches any word I searched for. I don't really think that's an address parsing issue.
https://www.comaps.app/news/2026-05-12/celebrating-the-first...
For example, I've used F-Droid OsmAnd extensively when planning my trip to Japan, because its guides, WikiData and Wikipedia integration are godsend for finding interesting places to visit, but used CoMaps when I was there to look things up and build routes. I'm also exclusively using OsmAnd for writing GNSS tracks because I can fine tune the parameters of measurements it captures.
That‘s the simple reason I‘m using Organic Maps and not taking a fifth look at CoMaps (and I downloaded CoMaps yesterday after the HN thread).
Would be nice for a preference.
I have also contributed to the OpenStreetMap by adding POI and requesting logic to be changed.
The only major issue which I got used to but sucks, is the search when it does not involved famous places or streets or both.
Streets will be shown as minor or major and alike, I do need to use Google Maps Browser version to find the place, and the on CoMaps manually navigate to said place.
But the fact that I get a map update a week, sometimes two maps update a week which other apps will take months and subscription, that alone is worth hustle.
What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.
All the talk is not about functionality of the app or anything which is actually important to users - it's all basically complaints about some kind of _internal drama_, add some misleading stuff about "dying project" or "lost community" from some commenters. So many cries about "ads" which are not actually ads but affiliate links in hotels POI which nobody clicks anyway, it's so mild it's just weird to lament about, at least I as a long time user see no issue at all.
I can advise CoMaps community to focus on developing the app which can actually make real users migrate and use because of functionality, speed or other things that matter, instead of making your community look toxic because of this trash-talk. Show real improvements in comparison with OM - make live maps updates like OSMAnd, make bookmark folders with specific colors tied to it, make app barely eat any battery, make convenient and powerful interface to add data to the map - then people will move. But for now Organic Maps is totally fine and many people like me see no reason to move from it anywhere.
We've already seen attackers simulate whole communities for attacks on individuals, and I'm just wondering when we're going to see someone simulate a whole open source community in a longer play, as an kickstart on a longer term strategy of compromise
Is there an example of this? To what end?
Do you really need someone to rhyme out why state actors do what they do?
Otherwise it sounds like a made up conspiracy theory….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
You don’t have to explain anything… that’s your call. A claim with nothing to support it doesn’t change either.
I don't have the means to research, but certainly there would be ample resources for such an attack in certain spaces??? Manufacturing social signal is hugely valuable
I think we saw the "opensource app go rogue for financial interests" and all of its related drama much more than state actors faking communities. So, Occam's razor applies here, IMO.
I don't think you read enough, I saw plenty of real problems with Organic maps described.
What problems exactly?
What's wrong with that?
I'm fine with this use, rewarding a developer, but neither was this transparent nor was it fair for all others working on the project (and supposedly getting cost claims refused).
On top of that, they contribute years of man-hours for free to the project. I believe it is completely fair for hard-working dev to use donated money to have some rest.
Imo, consumers of all that good are too spoiled to also require strict discipline or transparency or even hating original authors(as seen on HN).
Even long-term active contributors have been denied even totals information about donations and got to know about first hire by chance about a year since the fact.
How did you evaluate that? I use CoMaps, I am not a contributor to it, but in the comments I read I do not remember seeing many people specifying clearly if they are or not contributors (there might have been, but it did not feel like "mostly").
For me CoMaps worked well in the ~6 months for my use-cases (with some issues with the search as everybody reports for both projects). I like much better the site of CoMaps than of OrganicMaps, which influenced a bit my decision to use it. I also like they are hosted on Codeberg than on github.
I totally expect that’s is also the case with other commenters, but it’s fair to say it’s mostly a guess on my side as for most people you can’t say for sure as they don’t have GitHubs linked to the profile. But I’m 100% sure there are several contributors commenting there, especially taking into account how many CoMaps comments and mentions are there and overall popularity of this app, which is not very big.
OrganicMaps could be the best app there is in terms of functionality (it isn't), but if there are significant issues with their governance they are harmful to the broader OpenStreetMap community.
So we recommend CoMaps and OsmAnd, and carry on mapping.
FYI I've been the most active non-shareholder contributor of Organic Maps for 3+ years. You won't see me or other ex-OM contributors who've left to start CoMaps in OM GH contributor stats anymore, because OM had banned us (and nowadays they also ban users in their chats and SM accounts for just mentioning CoMaps). But you can still see our PRs, e.g. I've authored Outdoor map style amongst many other improvements.
You're right though that CoMaps had been founded because of things like governance, transparency, community and FOSS values, while many users are just interested in features (and hence often prefer Maps.ME even, which is like 10x more popular than OM looking at downloads).
Also "not surprising that OM banned you" - what process of adjudication was there before the project decided to ban someone who, by his description at least, is a key contributor? How was this person found guilty, and who decided on the penalty?
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PS - I'm not involved with any of OM, CoMaps, Maps.ME, and actually just found out the first two even exist.
I guess the secrecy comes from that time.
> What do you mean, leaked? Isn't this a FOSS project?
The client-app (CoMaps/Organic Maps) indeed is fully FLOSS. It uses OSM data, but that data is packaged into a specific and optimized format. The code _generating_ this optimized data (and serving it to the clients) was kept proprietary.
Please see my post above for details.
In short:
It was perfectly legal to publish this code (Apache 2.0 repo and DCO signed agreeing its a public contribution) and OM shareholders have always claimed that the map generator code is open and people are free to fork it.
However it turned out they were holding back a bunch of commits to prevent people from easily forking the project while maintaining still that the commits are FOSS and will be eventually pushed to the main repo, its just they're "experimental" still (but in fact they had been used in prod for a few years already).
We made an agreement to fix this discrepancy and push the commits to the public repo, so that we can honestly state that Organic Maps is truly an open source project with no tricks and reservations. This has happened several months before the conflict between the shareholders and community contributors.
And indeed a good part of the commits had been pushed public during next months. And when I published the rest of the commits OM shareholders knew about it of course and again they didn't say anything against it.
However after about a month (after negotiations to improve OM governance has failed and ex-contributors, me included, have started CoMaps) they have started accusing me of "stealing" those commits.
If you're interested in more details then please refer to https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/organic-maps-open-lett...
At first we've been having discussion and arguing about the matter and related topics in OM chats. But people saw their very shaky arguments and how they refute their own previous words about openness of the maps generator etc.
So then they started just deleting such discussions and eventually banning CoMaps contributors.
And nowadays they censor all mentions of CoMaps in their chats and SMs and often ban users who dared to mention us.
From telling you exactly which maps you need to calculate a route, to rich bookmarking options and grouping, all the different builtin map modes like boating and skiing, incredible customization of map looks and highlights making it possible to make e.g. a train mode, or a highly customized hiking mode, as well as detailed insights into recorded trails.
The other openstreetmaps app alternatives render faster, and imo have some better defaults in places, but with OSMAnd being so customizable, I can have my cake and eat it too.
That fact alone makes me stay away from CoMaps. You can find many interesting details about this conflict in the Russian Telegram group: https://t.me/OrganicMapsRu
> But for now Organic Maps is totally fine and many people like me see no reason to move from it anywhere.
In my experience OM drained my battery like crazy (I used it for KML tracks) and after consistently seeing that, I gave up on OM..
I can't speak for CoMaps, as I have never tried it.
I can imagine it's frustrating to see your own work continued by others, when you were hoping to benefit and continue the work and all this drama helps no one. Still better if both sides would avoid the ad hominem attacks and conspiracy theories about the other side.