Cause i had to go looking for it: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps
this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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Roman @rtsisyk revoked Github owner permissions from Alexander @biodranik and Viktor @vng and granted such permissions to the community contributor @pastk. This triggered Github's automatic "sanctions" check and the whole Github OM organization was automatically archived and admin access was blocked until OM's appeal was reviewed. It was unknown whether and when Github would review Organic Maps' appeal and unblock the repositories, so 2 weeks later the project migrated to the self-hosted git.omaps.dev/organicmaps instance, using the free and open source software forge Forgejo.
What the fuck? GitHub blocking the account because of automated security evaluation triggering (probably a good thing) but no review over two weeks (obviously a very bad thing)?
did I understand this right that nothing’s changed until they have their own OpenCollective fiscal host?
Please ELI5. What does this mean?
There's going to be a similar app to Organic Maps (which was a fork of MAPS.ME). Unknown yet if it is going to be better or worse.
What are you referring to? The reasons to fork, what a fork/forking process is, or what it means for this project?
Contributors disagreed with how the project was run and controlled. They committed to run their own project based on the other project. With more collaborative ownership and governance.
I am going to fork to. Co co maps
This is great that they’re forking but do that have to continue the OSS tradition of terrible app names?
Magic Earth enters the chat.
Yes.
"Come, try our new open-source product... Toefungus maps."
That one is at least memorable.
The name was voted by the community. There were a lot of very good names that unfortunately were already being used by other projects. I'm not a fan of the final choice either.
And, It’s not even unique.
On the iOS App Store, for example, there is:
- MyCOMAP
- COMAP
- ComAp Helpcentre
- MYCOMAP BALANCING
- and two apps from a company named COMAP S.A.
Yes, it was pointed out that CoMaps was also the name of a business operating in... maps. So if the project gets traction, they'll likely be sued into a better name.
When you hold a vote you get suggestions like Mappy mcmapface. Actually, that could work....
CoMaps is a good name, wtf
I like the name too, but I tried searching for it and I got results for compass. Lol
I mean, it's new.
Organic Maps had Kayak referral links since November 17, 2023.
After selecting some hotels, you can see an experimental "Details on Kayak" button that opens the Kayak website with photos and reviews about the selected hotel. If you make any booking using this button, Organic Maps receives a small referral bonus to fund the project development.
https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/releases/tag/2023.11.17-17-android
Whats wrong with that?
Because if there is proprietary code that is compiled, but can't be read, it's hard to know if there is data harvesting that people can't opt out of. And proprietary code being added paves the way for more proprietary code. If this is an incorrect understanding, someone correct me.
I dont trust someone who has affiliate links in code to not be selling unique identifiers like ip adresses etc.
Linux has a great history of splitting hairs over philosophical purity and practical practices.
Honestly, a fork is a probably a perfect panacea. The project will become a pair; one procuring funding at the price of it's soul, the other persisting as perfect (and pitifully prehistoric, save the proactive pedestrian). For a period both will produce positive momentum, but the paid product will peak higher and sooner, and fall precipitously. After the pitiable putrid product performs as well as pious poop, the persistent one will proceed to provide.
Tl;dr: ppppppppppppppppppp
Patently, this Potpourri of Prose Pivots Precipitously Protracted, so let me simply add that it's my Profound honor to meet you and you may call me "PP"
There, FTFY.
😗🤌Perfectíon
So when does it show its head in F-Droid ?
Their README.md says soon but there isn't an official release yet. Looking at their Issues tab, they are doing a lot of work.
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/releases
Build instructions are available. I am excited and might just do this:
https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/src/branch/main/docs/INSTALL.md#android-app
"User-first" and "public company" don't go together at all. That's just the reality. Now we just have to hope the fork doesn't die.
Does it work outside of CO?
Colombia only? Can’t imagine.
Slowclap
Being a private corporation should have given up the scam.
itsfoss would have mentioned that if they weren't also a private corporation.
Damn.
I absolutely hate open source drama. I don't want to read your diary when I use your software, I want it to work.
I'm not even against running a parallel for-profit for extra features or corporate sponsorships. People gotta eat. I'd much rather have that than deal with following sob stories about ruthless leadership, ego clashes in contributors and endless forking because everybody thinks everybody else sucks.
The more I hang out around here, where OSS is a bit of a religion, the more disenchanted I am with it and the more I think the big game changer for this space is getting contributions on usability, production and business rather than code.
What you call drama is a healthy community fighting against violated principles. So, according to you, what's the alternative? Just keep working with broken principles and never complain? Allow a bunch of greedy members to take over the project?
If you have paid attention, basically community always win: libreoffice vs openoffice, mariadb over mysql, jenkins over hudson, x.org over xfree86, ffmpeg over libav, nextcloud over owncloud, etc.
Right to fork is one of the most important to keep project in community hands and follow declared principles. Some forget that and are just doomed to repeat the history.
Disclaimer: I work on iDempiere who forked adempiere because of community disagreements, which also forked from compiere because of corporative takeout.
Long live to CoMaps!
Well, the point is I don't want CoMaps to win out over Organic Maps, I want some open source alternative to win out over Google Maps. Which is why I'd hesitate to say that LibreOffice "won" over anything, Google and Microsoft seem to be doing most of the winning in that particular space.
In a healthy community public arguments about "violated principles" wouldn't be a frequent occurrence and wouldn't lead to atomization of projects. I'm not taking sides on this particular example (mostly because I can't be bothered to look up the drama). But I am saying that besides the confusion and negativity caused by seeing open source developers constantly bicker about their violated principles, it can be a major setback for the perception of reliability of open source software overall. For an app you install that mostly works no matter what it's one thing, but if you integrate a piece of software into a workflow and it suddenly spawns two different pieces of software with different splinters of the original team that can be a significant disruption and if you fear significant disruptions you may hesitate to rely on that particular thing in the first place.
So do I think there shouldn't be a right to fork? Not at all. That's the whole point of open source.
Do I think it's overall a negative for the open source ecosystem that major projects break up due to their contributors being unable to come to a decision about the direction of the project? Absolutely.
You have some points but I think you're overexposed to forks and drama by being in these communities. Most OSS works and steadily improves and becomes a reliable tool. Closed software often gets better but often gets worse with bloat, subscription models, etc. I think that closed software does more harm to the utility and reliability of their products than open software.
A streamer using OBS doesn't worry about drama or forks, but they know they have to switch to Windows 11 with new hardware requirements and ads built in. A commuter using the Transit app (OSM map data) doesn't care about where the maps came from, but they know when the app has a bug, they have nowhere to turn to get it fixed. A 3D animator sees Blender steadily improve and knows if they switch to Adobe, they'll have to pay increasingly high subscription costs to keep using it. Any individual project is not forking all the time. You just know about it when it happens to any project, whether you use the software or not.
You're not wrong, but I think it isn't a linear relation. It's probably small projects having a lot of infighting and then it tapers off as it grows, and then it probably spikes again as it gets too big to handle as a small group but big enough that people in the group disagree and then tapers off again once it becomes a staple or so big it has some foundation or company attached to it.
I guess my worry, overexposure aside, is for the fizzy awkward transition bits in there impacting the perception of the whole thing, but while Organic was pretty big it's still true that the vast majority of people have no idea it exists.
Well, I don't know the specific case about CoMaps, but forking is a really hard decision, and you need to have strong backup from community to dare going that way. I would assume when projects decide to split is because all the attempts to arrive to a good decision failed. Driving a fork for success is a very hard task, and I guess the majority of forks that fail (a lot) are because they didn't have support from community.
About libreoffice winning over m$ or g$ ? Well, I also would like to see that happening, but not to be replaced by another non-FOSS or half-FOSS option.
I would absolutely take "half-FOSS", if we are thinking of the same thing. Pretty consistently the most robust, reliable, expansive FOSS projects have some foundation taking corporate sponsors or a for-profit arm providing ancillary services and I have few issues with those (less with the first than with the second). I mean, FOSS developers should be paid a salary. If that means you are backed by a significant chunk of an industry like Blender or have a for-profit arm that runs a business on the side like Home Assistant, I would much rather have that than... you know, Microsoft Office. Your mileage may vary.
These shareholders have reportedly used the project’s donation funds for personal expenses, like holiday trips, raising serious concerns about financial transparency.
That thing is definitely a problem though.
But it's a problem for the team, not the user, right? It's one of those things where in closed software it's either... well, the point of the thing, or if it isn't people would get quietly fired and move on trying to impact the perception of the product as little as possible.
Here it impacts the product in that you may have to learn about it, learn about the fork and transition to the fork. There's no separation between the HR/organizational issues and the software issues, and that's a bit of a problem, I think, and why it reads as frequent drama.
You know, wherever you are, drama is inescapable. At least with OSS the community seems to have control over the drama.
contributions on usability, production
Isn't that made in code?
I don't know about that. I am not privvy to the internal politics of most commercial software developers and that's a good thing. I guess there is some drama about whatever layoffs, corporate business practices or enshittification those are deploying, but I am a big enough man to concede that, while objectively worse, it annoys me less. At least you get to be outraged and holier-than-thou with those instead of losing faith in the ability of smart people to be mature and collectively productive.
And no, production practices and usability aren't the same as coding, even if they are implemented in code. Unfortunately, I do think that confusion is... widespread in that community. It's a very engineer-driven space and that has downsides. I do get why, engineers don't like to be managed on top of contributing to things freely and there are fewer people in those capacities willing to donate their time who aren't programmers with a side skill, which in aggregate explains a lot.
Not necessarily what's happening here, but still.
I think it's a people issue rather than FOSS issue. People interested in this stuff are just like that.
That's depressing for different reasons, but still a bummer.
That's a shame it's one of three things i use on my phone. Thanks for the update im waiting for a ios release now.
🤢 that's pretty bad. Glad I happened to catch this.
looking fwd to this!