Organic Maps Community open letter

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https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-organic-maps-shareholders-a0bf770c

This has been ongoing for quiet a number of months, and everyone was being shut down or banned when questions were raised. Just an #ot, nothing more to add.
I mean the Organic Maps one…

Updated comments.

  • This was originally posted just as a URL by @pastk in another thread and I just commented as one of my fellow colleague from another continent was speaking about it for quiet sometime now. I was not personally involved and I should have mentioned that point in the beginning itself. I apologies if I depicted any personal involvement, which is and was never there (other than checking the app out few years back I guess)?
  • Finally, I guess one can look up wayback or some kind of archive to find what went on. I do not have any links with me, and alas I am in a habit of cleaning up my OS every now and then, and never keep too many unwanted or idle things as backup.
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@vdbhb59 Could you please provide some details? E.g. on which platforms were people “shut down or banned”? Any links to example cases?

Maybe you mean the Kayak affiliate links drama? Its related of course, but the Open Letter is much more broad than this.

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Hi,

I would be very much interested in your analysis and viewpoints, including references. In fact, given this is presented on the f-droid forum, what outcome are you hoping for and why?

Not challenging you, I’m always happy to learn new things by hearing other’s opinions.

Thanks

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Originally it was me who posted the link to the Open Letter on the TWIF thread (and it got included in the Sync your clock, it's stable time | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository already).

Then there was a follow-up post/reply and it was moved into its own thread.

And its likely there would be more discussions especially given that there is quite a history of drama between OM and F-Droid.

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Aha. Thank you for pointing that out. This is definitely good to know when making a choice between a selection of apps. Much appreciated.

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This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

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I’ve read alot about comaps, the new fork of organicmaps which became a reality because of “internal dispute” happeining with organicmaps, apparently one of the maintainers/creators of organicmaps posted on socialmedia that organicmaps always was and will be a commerical product. Meaning they sell data from their uses?

I do not believe these claims because i have great trust in fdroid and if organic maps was no longer to be considered trustworthy i asume fdroid would have removed the app.
However it would be great if fdroid members can shine light on this whole situation.

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see punches being exchanged in Organic Maps is no longer fully open-source (#3605) · Issues · F-Droid / Data · GitLab

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Don’t hate me for making this thread.. i don’t know if organicmaps is still trustworthy to use, that’s all i want to understand.
The nonfreeasstets flag means that the app is not or atleast not fully opensource, so that basically means there is propietary code running on any device which has organicmaps installed?
I don’t want to piss anyone of, i just want to know what my next step has to be, either keep organicmaps or replace it with comaps, my decision would be based on fdroid stance about organicmaps. If it is not opensource i will want to remove it. Please help me understand the situation correctly.

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I just want to understand the situation that’s all.
From reading all the comments on gitlab, and other sites.. it’s a big drama but one type of drama i can’t make sense of. I’m unable to make a decision.
Either you are opensource or you are not, there is no partialy opensource, if you include propietary code then you are not opensource.
I remember reading a comment somewhere that said “organicmaps always was and will be a commerical app” which would be to opposite of nonprofit in a way.
Can’t find that comment right now though.
I just don’t want apps on my phone whom collect my data and sell it, but right now i can’t even understand if this is the case or not with organicmaps.
Anyone dig to the bottom of all this and say, what happened, and what’s the path forward?
The more i try to learn what happened and what to do nex, the more i get confused.
Instead of finding a solution… this is why i hope someone here cn help.

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switching to CoMaps without a doubt.

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Never hating you, but request you to not create different threads for organic maps and keep it all here. Your previous one was also merged here.

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…some ASSETS are not free, assets NOT code.

In F-Droid client you can expand the anti-features section and read exactly what this means.

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Organicmaps does not do this, now.

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Forgive my ignorance here, please, but I’ve never truly understood what the current issue is with OM.

I appreciate the FOSS model can be brought into question for many apps nowadays, given the apps/client can be open source while the server-side is not. Then there’s different types of licences. So this I’m okay with. I’m also keeping in mind that there can be proprietary or non-free assets in OSS, and this can catered for in the licences (does happen in this landscape).

My impression is that CoMaps initially forked from OM, due to concerns largely around a, potential, profit model. Then CM mentioned (in their git README?) some things have improved without going into detail.

Nevertheless OM continues to highlight their privacy commitments. Thus, my question is: what is the current issue with OM? Can someone shed light on this?

EDIT: Correcting some typos and formatting

EDIT 2: Adding line regarding my awareness of non-free and some proprietary assets.

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Simple solution is to change to Comaps. It looks and behaves exactly the same as Organic Maps without the doubts about the integrity of OM.