[neilv]

As comments in the first link suggest, the project emphasizes privacy, and it would have to be done in a privacy-respecting way.

The second link is asking for iCloud synchronization.

A project that emphasizes privacy and open platforms might want to just deprioritize requests coming from people on privacy-violating, closed platforms, since those people hurt their own credibility in the approaches they suggest.

[dash2]

If privacy advocates want to persuade people outside their bubble, this is surely not the right attitude. Imagine telling someone who wants iCloud sync, "oh you're hurting your own credibility"? Uh yeah (backing off slowly), guess I'll go back to Apple/Google maps and miss out on the ineffable benefit of your non-functional, but deeply virtuous, software.

[n2d4]

These kind of projects aren't trying to cater to people who don't care about privacy. It caters to people who care about privacy, inside the bubble. I don't think Organic Maps is trying to become a unicorn Google Maps competitor that everyone can use.

[neilv]

We've lost a lot of ground on various open projects because of a bunch of people taking the free gifts, while being oblivious -- or indifferent -- to why we have those.

Maybe it's time to try a different approach.

[dash2]

You shared things and people used them, yes. Now the new approach is… what exactly? Write software aimed at a minority of activists who pass its purity test? Be my guest, but spare me the piety and attitudinising of OP, and don’t be surprised when small scale results in high unit costs and missing features.

[stonogo]

Most of the privacy advocates I know have given up on persuading people outside their bubble and now merely want tools that don't spy on them.

Proseletyzing doesn't really work, mostly because any attempt to have this conversation attracts people like you, contributing nothing but bad-faith sumamries and pretending anyone who disagrees with you is crazy or dangerous. Calling the software "non-functional" because it doesn't assume that everyone wants everything they do shipped off to a third party 'sync' service is disingenuous. "Backing off slowly" is just a pointless ad hominem.

It's nice that the result is a slowly increasing collection of applications which don't make the same assumptions as the walled-garden offerings. It would be nicer if it could happen without the peanut gallery attacking everyone.

[googlryas]

Can't you just sync some encrypted blob to iCloud? How is iCloud privacy violating?

[hedora]

From reading the bug, they don’t support iCloud backup, which is surprising to me, since I thought supporting backup was trivial on iOS.

As the bug points out, they could use core data sync for people that are navigating using multiple devices.

I believe all of the above supports transparent E2E encryption at this point.

(For backup, there is a toggle, since E2E makes your backup useless if you lose the only device that contains your keys, and many people only have one apple device, and don’t want to bother enlisting their friends to secret-share their recovery key).