Comment by Freak_NL
6 hours ago
Regarding Organic Maps: I would recommend keeping tabs on what is happening there since this year. They seem to be having significant governance issues.
https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/organic-maps-open-lett...
Short story: forget Organic Maps, use successor CoMaps or competitor OsmAnd.
Thank you, that's interesting and a concern.
Do you have pointers to information about the governance and legitimacy of CoMaps?
(I see a mention that it's non-profit, but no statement about what kind of non-profit, not even on the donate page where that info is customary and relevant for US tax reasons. Also, I see no mention of who's who, nor how they operate.)
The closest I find is this:
https://www.comaps.app/support/what-is-the-comaps-history/
> As a result of the issues not being resolved, in April 2025, the community of former Organic Maps contributors created the CoMaps project, based on the Organic Maps open-source code.
If what that sounds like is true (that it does represent the community of contributors), it still will be important to have safeguards against someone taking over the project.
Or, if what that sounds like isn't true, that could be bad.
One matter that will have to be resolved with governance (if it hasn't already), is that there's what looks like an allegation that the CoMaps project is already tainted with code to which is expressly doesn't have license:
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/pulls/1039#issuecomment-6...
A concern is that a funded commercial competitor could bankrupt a less-funded volunteer project with lawyer fees just arguing the merits of that.
Nope, all I know is what I picked up in the OpenStreetMap community, like that thread on the forums, and this open letter:
https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/
I was vaguely aware of this drama but hadn't looked into it. After reading through your link, I've switched over to Comaps. I don't like lack of transparency in community driven projects. Appreciate the flag!