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> 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. Though you won't see me (or other ex-OM contributors who've left to start CoMaps) in OM github 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.

I have a vague reminescence that maps.me (the predecessor of organic maps) was bragging about super-duper efficient maps format back in the day.

I guess the secrecy comes from that time.

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.

The code in question was in Apache 2.0 repo and DCO signed agreeing its a public contribution.

Please see my post above for details.

> 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.

If you're interested in more details then please refer to https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/organic-maps-open-lett...

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.

damn, that's an unintentionally amazing advertisement for comaps. downloading now! X-D

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.

> 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.

> 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.

> I saw plenty of real problems with Organic maps described.

What problems exactly?

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.

> lead dev using donations to pay for holidays

What's wrong with that?

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.

>Hosting etc. expenses are a minor fraction compared to OM's donations inflow.

How do you know that if they are not disclosing this info?

Because he can estimate based on typical hosting costs for similar websites, on one hand, and a lower-bound estimate of the number and amount of donations, on the other.

Because we have similar costs in CoMaps, e.g. the most expensive part is the map generation server and both OM and CoMaps rent the same model from the same provider and its less than 250 eur/month.

And according to https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/16225385/Organic-Maps... in 2025 they got ~120k eur and this figure likely doesn't include all the donation sources (in addition to the main Stripe channel they also have OpenCollective, LiberaPay, crypto...)

That's fair, however 120k is peanuts for company of developers. I still think it is fair to use that money at dev's disposal.

I got map generator concerns which is totally valid - but that OM trashtalking for things that was never stated(i.e. purpose of donations) is just wrong - even if you like CoMaps, why not be grateful for all awesome work done by OM team which is the foundation of CoMaps?

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.

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 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

> sometimes suspicious of nation states building these types of open source project forks

Is there an example of this? To what end?

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?

An example would be very interesting and yes explaining what they’re up to would be interesting as well.

Otherwise it sounds like a made up conspiracy theory….

Your accusatory ignorance is not mine to relieve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

That doesn’t seem to fit the scenario described earlier.

You don’t have to explain anything… that’s your call. A claim with nothing to support it doesn’t change either.

You need to work on your reading comprehension. I am not the parent.

For someone worried about other people being “accusatory” you seem to be that way a lot.

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.

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.

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.

> make app barely eat any battery

> 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 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.