A product using free and open-source data generated by the OSM community plus crowd sourcing traffic and keeping the code proprietary does not sit well with me. You can have a paid product but open source the project.
The reason for that is it's search actually works, it displays live traffic info, and they have a simple easy-to-read privacy policy: https://www.magicearth.com/privacy/
Would it be better open source? Yeah, for sure. However, as far as I can tell, they abide by all the licencing terms for OSM, etc.
I'm trying to keep my phone as de-Google'd as possible.
That said, the one thing I miss from proprietary Android land is Google Maps so I am very interested in a comparable alternative. I'm trying Organic Maps at the moment, and had played with OsmAnd~ but found it lacking when I tried to use it for real-time navigation while driving.
Do you get many apps that complain about not having Google Play Services installed? Just had one (not Magic Earth). Seems to work fine after I hit "OK" to dismiss its message. I'm assuming it only requires it for auto installing updates.
[1] - https://microg.org/
I was in remote NZ without reception and we used it for navigation/routing. It wasn't the most efficient and Google disagreed when we finally got signal back, but it got us to where we wanted to be and the map was up to date enough.
Counterexample: Mapbox [1]
In addition to all of the above, Maps.me has had a pretty ample userbase for a long time now - while it is technically an open-source codebase (to the extent its even been forked & put on FDroid), its privacy policy & general Russian links of the company behind it still leave a lot of red flags for your typical OSM users.
Interesting case of why developers may prefer open source: company was sold, but code was open to legal reuse under a new brand.
As for organic maps, I tried it a while ago and it gave me some rather annoying directions. Maybe they've improved their route finding algorithm since then but I'm not feeling motivated to try it again just yet.
Please speak for yourself :) OSM contributor here: I'm already happy if there's a great mapping product that uses open geo data, might not use it myself if it's closed source but it's better than google keeping everything to itself or behind a paywall. I understand it costs them money to keep their map up to date, but they could also collaborate with the rest of us and have free geo data for all. Apple taking OSM data for their devices, for example, is to me exciting rather than "not sitting well". I'd be ten times as thrilled if they'd open source it, don't get me wrong, but still
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iOS_applic...
Hopefully they add it, but there aren’t many good open traffic projects that exist, so they’d need to rely on crowd sourced data like Magic Earth is doing and I’m not sure how well that would work.
OrganicMaps is a fork of Maps.me, which is very well known among the general public: 55k ratings on the Apple Store and 50M downloads on the Play Store for Maps.me vs. 1.8k and 10M for OsmAnd.
Unfortunately a lot of people who use Maps.me/OrganicMaps don’t know that maps come from OSM, whereas with OsmAnd it’s clear right from the name.
OM has quite clear attribution, as required by ODBL license of OpenStreetMap data.
The advantage is that it does have a very streamlined UI, so if you just want to get to a map and navigate it's far more straightforward. You really need to spend some time to understand the "quirks" of how to use OsmAnd (a downside of its long feature list).
But then I remembered I had Organic Maps tucked away, ready to go, with a highly detailed map of California for offline navigation use.
Big thanks to Organic Maps for making me seem prepared and allowing me to recover gracefully from what could otherwise have been a somewhat annoying situation.
I've never seen Organic Maps fail.
I use it on my iPhone, but I’m rooting for OSM, long term.
I’d happily pay a bit to a company that put the money towards an open source, privacy preserving OSM app, and towards improving the upstream map data.
I almost miss the days of printing out MapQuest directions
What the holy hell is going on with that repo? do they `git add local.osm.dump` or something? I mean, I was kidding but evidently not that crazy far off: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/blob/master/data/...
I was expecting to find `git add release/organicmaps-1.0.apk` which is a super common "I've never used git before" antipattern
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since I already paid the price, some `git archive HEAD | tar -tvf - | sort -k3 -n` coughed up
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 1854526 2023-08-07 05:45 android/src/fdroid/play/listings/en-US/graphics/phone-screenshots/1.jpg
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 1863096 2023-08-07 05:45 tools/shaders_compiler/linux/mali_compiler_es3/openglessl/libMali-T600_r11p0-00rel0.so
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 2583640 2023-08-07 05:45 tools/shaders_compiler/linux/mali_compiler_es3/openglessl/libMali-T600_r12p0-00rel0.so
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 3017640 2023-08-07 05:45 tools/shaders_compiler/linux/mali_compiler_es3/openglessl/libMali-T600_r13p0-00rel0.so
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 3155104 2023-08-07 05:45 data/06_code2000.ttf
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 3451900 2023-08-07 05:45 data/02_droidsans-fallback.ttf
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 3676527 2023-08-07 05:45 data/packed_polygons.bin
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 4696613 2023-08-07 05:45 software_renderer/default_font.cpp
-rwxrwxr-x root/root 6131664 2023-08-07 05:45 tools/shaders_compiler/linux/glslangValidator
-rwxrwxr-x root/root 6498904 2023-08-07 05:45 tools/shaders_compiler/macos/glslangValidator
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 7315682 2023-08-07 05:45 3party/opening_hours/opening_hours_integration_tests/opening-count.lst
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 8384030 2023-08-07 05:45 data/kml_test_data/test.kmz
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 8757104 2023-08-07 05:45 data/WorldCoasts.mwm
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 20,461,104 2023-08-07 05:45 tools/shaders_compiler/linux/mali_compiler_es3/openglessl/libMali-Gxx_r3p0-00rel0.so
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 43,812,962 2023-08-07 05:45 data/World.mwm
-rw-rw-r-- root/root 50,994,390 2023-08-07 05:45 data/dictionary.slf
$ git log --format='%cs %s' -- data/World.mwm
2023-07-13 [planet] New data from 230710.
2023-06-05 [planet] New data from 230602.
2023-05-08 [planet] New data from 230503.
2023-04-02 [planet] New data from 230329.
2023-03-01 [planet] New data from 230227.
2023-02-13 [planet] New data from 230210.
2023-01-24 [planet] New data from 230121.I was just wishing for a Waze alternative last night, and here it is. It's proprietary and commercial, but it's not from FAANG or a company subject to the Chinese or Russian governments. I'll take that as an improvement.
I recommend Brouter instead of Komoot: https://bikerouter.de/
Best thing. Your planned route isn’t stored there, it is your actual link to the website. Incredible simple and reusable.
>you can have a paid product but open source the project
And you’ll instantly create 10 competitors overnight. If you use the GPL, those competitors will just be Chinese or from some non-western jurisdiction that doesn’t care about GPL enforcement.
Man, rms followers are annoying. Stop trying to GPL the entire internet. Magic Earth is a great tool. A big part of why it’s great is probably because its authors were motivated by profit.
> If you use the GPL, those competitors will just be Chinese or from some non-western jurisdiction that doesn’t care about GPL enforcement.
This is true – some in China will use GPL code and not stick to the license and that may be a competitive advantage over companies that do play ball¹. But other people ignoring the license should not be considered a reason for anyone else not to, and that shouldn't stop people choosing the GPL if that is what they want for their software.
> Man, rms followers are annoying. Stop trying to GPL the entire internet.
Man, anti-GPL people are annoying. Stop trying to have someone else's cake and eat it. :)
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[1] Onyx and their Boox range² being one example, last I heard the company was trying to play the race card and make it an anti-China-sentiment issue instead of a blatantly-disregarding-a-license-agreement matter.
[2] Not the only issue that puts me off those devices, apparently hidden call home code is present and always active on at least some of them.
It would be nice if this app had more open code and it's nice if people contribute back to the data set too.
But the database is the open source artifact here, not the software - as long as they're respecting that then it feels ok, even if more would be desirable.
I still find it very odd that people have problems with projects using open source projects as the licence allows.
This is already common. For example, Komoot which is now big in the bicycle-travel world, uses OSM data but keeps its code proprietary and even locks community-generated content down.