We've actually massively held off on begging for donations -- for example we removed the ability of the app to dynamically insert ads into the menus or change the home button to a icon, and massively scaled back our end-of-year fundraising post because we actually have a decent amount of money in the bank. Instead we've chosen to thank contributors for funding our ability to afford better servers etc. What we need more than more money is more volunteerism, which we're happy to see increasing every day!
Stay tuned to CoMaps, we've been releasing two updates with maps per month lately and soon will be able to release maps as often as our servers will allow!
Hi Alex! Talking about yourself in third person again? Sorry I haven't made enough new features for you lately, I've been a little busy. I'll do better for you, I promise. I wish that our attempts to formally communicate and resolve concerns weren't considered "pathetic" but c'est la vie.
It's all user submitted. It takes someone caring enough to fix it, to make it work. Check out StreetComplete, Every Door, Vespucci, and/or CoMaps to help add/fix data
On top of the OsmAnd user experience being a little rough (it can do a lot, but not gracefully) it relies on accurate OSM data underneath. So the best thing to do is at least make a Note on OSM, or edit it yourself, and mark that intersection as having a no-turns-allowed restriction.
Even Google is relying on user submissions to keep its stuff accurate these days, they just have money to pay editors and reviewers.
Very astute! Legally the code is owned by each contributor and licensed via the DCO. Financially the project is underneath the umbrella of the Platform 6 co-op (see OpenCollective)
This is temporary though and a permanent nonprofit home is a top priority.
Most of the activity is public, so look at the usernames of the fork leaders vs their activity on the upstream project... It's most of the recent top contributors who've been around for a long time and made their perspectives pretty clear.
Good point. I wonder whether it would be good for forks to come with a page that makes a case for the legitimacy of the fork and who will be controlling it and/or setting the founding rules for the governance. With links back to supporting raw evidence in repos and forums, so people can verify.
The thing being forked could also respond to these clear assertion, which could be a check against confusing forks that are bad-faith, ill-conceived, not necessarily aligned, etc.
(Of course, when I hear of a fork, I instantly assume that there was probably a good reason, and there usually is, but always assuming that is a mistake, which exposes us another way to bad actor risk.)
Most of the top 16 signers of the open letter are well-known names in Organic Maps, and the Updates to the letter try to fairly characterize the (lack of) response from OM. It's hard to link directly to raw evidence for the general public to review, since the most concerning topics (what will owners do in the future, what have they done with donation money) were in chat rooms that don't have public links and are exactly what the letter is asking for OM "owners" to provide. https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-organic-maps-shareho...
We've got some FAQs up about legitimacy and plans but the website was literally coming together over the weekend, so there's more work to be done for sure. https://www.comaps.app/support/ -- one thing we're also trying to do is focus on the future rather than rehash issues that haven't seen resolution in chat channels in over a month and don't seem to be getting resolved any time soon. The community and users deserve an actively-developed app, and the CoMaps founders don't want to continue contributing to a for-profit app, so in absence of a timely satisfactory resolution all our energy is going into the fork!
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