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Comment by lukeqsee | Hacker News Reader

> To me that sound like while I can still use my own map tiles, it would still costs the same as if I used Mapbox hosted tiles.

That's my reading of it, as well. Even though it's somewhat expected on the data collection side, it's decidedly unexpected that they not only require ToS acceptance, but also licensing fees for what used to be entirely free, OSS software.

> Hopefully the OSS community can maintain a fork of the 1.x codebase.

I'm sure this will happen. My company is trying to get some consensus around the best way to proceed. Email in bio if you're interested in taking part!

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The https://github.com/openmaptiles/gl-js proposed as the primary shared repo for an open-source fork of the Mapbox GL JS 1.x codebase.

Let's set autobuild of documentation, packages and configure CI on pull requests. Pull requests, forks & contributions welcome - as on other parts of the https://openmaptiles.org/ project providing free and open-source vector tiles of entire world for self-hosting.

LOL haven't you guys had enough legal trouble with Mapbox already ;)

In all seriousness I completely agree as someone in the mapping community this seems like a logical home. You have my vote!

Hopefully the fork will be GPL, so Mapbox won't be able to steal all of the work the new developers do and release it in their new proprietary product.

Why not? Mapbox has been allowing us to steal the work of their developers and release it in our proprietary products up until this point.

Because if they can take all of the improvements from the fork, but the fork can't take any of their improvements, the fork will wither and die.

That's not the case. There is already a massive ecosystem around MVT (vector tiles) that needs an open source renderer. Mapbox GL can have all the bells and whistles it wants, but since it's still tied to Mapbox's SaaS pricing, it's not a viable alternative for that ecosystem.

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