[pastk]

> 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).

[nodifference]

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?

[einpoklum]

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?

---

PS - I'm not involved with any of OM, CoMaps, Maps.ME, and actually just found out the first two even exist.

[pietervdvn]

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.

[einpoklum]

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.

[pastk]

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.

[sam_lowry_]

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.

[pastk]

> 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...

[pastk]

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.

[einpoklum]

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.

[ynniv]

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