There is also CoMaps (https://www.comaps.app/) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/
There is also CoMaps (https://www.comaps.app/) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/
Thank you! This is highly relavant. I wish OPs would put a bit more research into what they post
https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/
> Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.
> a small group of shareholders
This is sketchy. The entity at the bottom of the page is Organic Maps OÜ, which is an Estonian private limited company. Estonia has non-profits (MTÜs). The fact that this isn't organised as one makes it a commercial venture, except one that asks for donations.
Indeed and this is one of the key reasons we have started CoMaps. The main OM shareholder made it clear to us that interests of the company and the shareholders are at the forefront.
e-Residency is most likely the main reason for this 'run' from Estonia.
The original authors are from Russia, and their first product maps.me was sold to a Russian company with ties with Kremlin. I wouldn’t touch anything they do, so Organic was a no-go for me. Since it’s a new thing now, I can give it a go.
This assumes that OP would make a different app choice if OP knew this context. And it also assumes OP does not know this context. Neither are supported by the evidence, since HN links are posted without OP commentary. Not everybody cares so much about this sort of thing and perhaps OP was drawn to the app for other reasons. HN is not a monoculture.
Are you suggesting a Google/Apple Maps alternative with the differentiators being privacy-focused, "No ads. No tracking. Developed with love by the open-source community"hits #1 on HN and somehow the OP or HN polyculture doesn't care about being forked aver governance concerns, the inclusion of proprietary components in the code, using project’s donation funds for personal expenses, and running ads because of "other reasons"? Please say more.
The differentiator is that Organic Maps works offline, and is better than Google and Apple for hiking trails. I guarantee you that 100% of the install base does not care about FOSS swamp discourse. Those people are an irrelevant rounding error.
A lot of normal people I know used to love maps.me but have become dissatisfied with the ads and other unwelcome commercial elements. They would definitely chose coMaps over Organic Maps just to lessen the risk of that happening again.
Just downloaded CoMaps. Why does it start with a zoomed out view of the entire world, especially given that I gave it location services and it shows my current location (in North America). The very first UX experience this app gives is "I am primarily for people interested in maps and geography"
Contrast this with Apple Maps - when you open it, there are 4 big tap controls for actions like "Home" "Work", a search bar, and a map that covers a 1-mile radius around you .
I'd encourage your UX flow to go something more like: request location services > if granted, immediately start downloading their local tileset in the background > zoom to a 20-mile radius around the user
CoMaps does have this exact UX flow actually. Unfortunately it is somewhat flaky and frequently falls back to not doing it.
Unfortunately I have yet to find an OSM app that offers a properly usable modern interface. Most are passable if you are a nerd who doesn’t mind being inconvenienced and can work around the quirks; my non techy friends open the app once and immediately delete it. We really need an Apple or Google maps clone.
And the online mapping ecosystem is completely fragmented. Half the apps out there demand a $25/month subscription, creating these hermetic, proprietary silos. They are gating and monetizing trails, hikes, and routes that were crowdsourced by the community in the first place. I’m not paying $300 a year to buy back data that I personally contribute to. There are gazillion similar apps, with slight variations, and the more powerful ones look like something straight from 2000s.
Instead of a pay-to-access model, a sustainable consumer map ecosystem could look like Wikipedia, or better yet, a peer-to-peer network like IPFS where you trade compute (route calculation) and storage. It could be a barter: you get to use the collective resources of the network because you are actively hosting tiles, routing data, or contributing metadata back into it. But that requires a critical mass to take off (like bitcoin did).
OpenStreetMap is great, but what we actually need is a modern consumer frontend built on top of an open, distributed layer: decentralized public registry for user-generated content, keeping your routes and trip itineraries discoverable by any client app rather than locked inside VC-backed silos.
Furthermore, current open-source projects miss a lot of quality-of-life features that commercial apps have—things like crowd-sourced opinions and reviews about places, public transit schedules, real-time traffic alerting and reporting, location sharing, street-view, and dependable speed limits during navigation. Without these active, live-data layers, the map looks stale and lagging behind the real world.
The user interface also needs to shift from a passive viewport to a high-contribution editor. Right now, if you want to make serious geometry edits, you’re forced into JOSM. It’s hard to boot, clunky, and quite clearly has never seen a proper UI/UX designer, scaring away everyone but the most hardcore power users. I'm a person who doesn't give up easily, but when I tried adding parking zone regions for the city I gave up after 2 days of trying to make some sense of this software. A modern mobile UI should let you freehand draw a route that snaps to paths, edit regions on the fly, or drop advanced metadata — like parking restrictions — in just three obvious taps, without a steep technical learning curve.
Finally, the client app itself should be a pluggable core. Instead of building every feature from scratch, it should allow users to plug in open modules for whatever they need, whether that's live public transit routing, traffic estimates, location sharing, or advanced 3D metro overlays. The data is there, and the rendering tech is there; we just need a shared, distributed network structure so companies can't charge us a premium to gate the social and metadata layers. I wish there was an EU initiative to have a fully featured app like that, unifying all the existing ones in place of N abhorrent, barely functional implementations in all of the different local public transport apps (looking at you italian AMT genova or you, french IDF mobilites).
Murena (the company behind the /e/ mobile OS) is developing a FOSS app, maybe it will suit your needs : https://murena.com/en/murena-maps-your-questions-and-answers...
It should zoom in and automatically download.
Disagree.
When I downloaded it via F-Droid earlier today it did what wanted. Unfortunately Android Auto is only enabled in the Play Store Version, so I downloaded that and there it went the same as for you. At least it immediately prompted me to download my local tile set when I tapped the geolocation button to zoom in.
> if granted, immediately start downloading their local tileset in the background
Nope. I do not want any app to start downloading hundreds of megabytes without my permission.
And Organic Maps is itself a fork of Maps.me, started ...due to concern over the governance of Maps.me (introduction of commercial elements I think?).
This app has had quite a history.
Maps.me was sold and the acquiring company moved to a new proprietary code base. The quality dropped considerably. That's what motivated the original Maps.me founders to start Organic Maps.
what are the concerns over governance of organics maps ?
Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case. Also people got upset that the developers used the product funding to pay for their personal expenses. The idea is folks want the developers to isolate all the money they make from this project and use it to only pay expenses directly related to this project. If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably.
https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/?ref=itsfoss.com
> If they need to eat or something they should get a job, presumably.
The tone of this comment is quite different from the text of the open letter to which you refer. Specifically this section. I don't have any personal knowledge either way, but this stood out to me.
> As it was revealed by Roman @rtsisyk it wasn't unusual for the Shareholders to use project's donations as their own money e.g. Alexander @biodranik paid for his personal holiday trip expenses this way. At the same time all other contributors were consistently denied any access to any financial information (even to the totals of money donated/spent). (It's fine for developers to be reimbursed for their hard work, but it should be done in a fair, transparent and accountable way.)
Going on holiday is why I work. And I use organic maps when I’m on holiday. And donate. Good luck to them.
> And donate
How do you square this with Organic Maps being organised as a for-profit entity?
Same as when I donate money to Apple.
You donate money to Apple?
Yes. Wilfully.
So yeah, if you donate money to Apple, Inc., Organic Maps makes sense for you. For everyone else, it seems like a scam.
Calling developers who providing you a great OSS app a scam because you don't like how project run is very rude imo
It is not common for American for-profit corporations to accept donations. What you are paying is a retail price for Apple products. (Post edited after a check of the legality, but donating to Apple would still be highly unusual, and if the parent admits to doing this, he’s not going to get any less grief.)
> As a USA for-profit corporation, Apple is unable to accept donations
I don't think this is true. You can donate to a for-profit corporation. It just counts as income to them and isn't deductible to you.
How does Apple accept donations?
>(even to the totals of money donated/spent). (It's fine for developers to be reimbursed for their hard work, but it should be done in a fair, transparent and accountable way.)
Hardly disagree with this claim. Donation is something you give without any expected usage - otherwise it is a fundraising, payment, investment, etc.
> Some parts of the server were closed source for a bit. No longer the case.
In fact, nowadays there are many more closed parts in OM's map generator - many OM's bigger new features like hiking, cycling and bus routes depend on closed source improvements to the map generator. And some binary files required to build the app (e.g. packed_polygons.bin) are nowadays distributed under a custom non-FOSS data license. I.e. nowadays its basically impossible to fork OM as is with all its features - and the "right to fork" is a cornerstone of FOSS.
Also ref to: https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/organic-maps/
I think it's fair for people to be surprised when their donations to the project are used for personal expenses when that is not clearly spelled out. There's nothing wrong with crowdfunding what is effectively a salary for a F/OSS project, but it needs to be explicit when soliciting donations.
The people that develop the project have needs like anyone else. That includes vacations.
And they are welcome to crowdfund for them. But they need to be explicit about what exactly the money is funding.
They tried to put ads into Organic Maps, and they only backed down because CoMaps sprung up in response.
Others in the thread highlighted other issues, like Organic Maps' proprietary license for some parts of the repo: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/blob/master/DATA_....
Please no. This is why I left Maps.me, every time I opened maps.me I'd have to click through ads.
‘Ads’ is a bit of a stretch. They put opt-in referral links.
I don't think there was an opt-in, at least at first. The Kayak links were there and they had a generic OM referral code attached so they got the credit
https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/
So sad. I imagine 99.9% of organic maps users will never know.
I was hoping for an offline open map with specifically tracking (My tracks from Google or now 3rd party) so I can log my adventures. bonus if I can save a printable thing for my wall or something...guess I know what this weekends project is.
OSMAnd is similarly OSM-based, offline, and FOSS (available from F-Droid) and does tracking. It is not typically recommended in posts like these because its wealth of options is daunting to the general public, while Organic Maps and CoMaps are more streamlined.
I have been a happy user of OsmAnd+ for over 15 years at this point, I can strongly recommend it if you need power user features.
(Yes the OsmAnd+ is the paid version, but it is the old pay-once version and I have definitely got my money's worth at this point, and it supports an open source project.)
Comaps can record tracks if that's what you need :-)
And for 99.9% it will not make any difference, but I'm sure for some percentage of users missing hiking trails in CoMaps will make difference for sure.
Why use fork of a fork which lacks features of the previous one?
Users don't care about dev drama, if it doesn't affect them.