You might know of Organic Maps, the open source app that’s an alternative to Google Maps. Recently, concerns have been raised about its governance, with many contributors questioning the project’s transparency and direction.

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.

These shareholders have reportedly used the project’s donation funds for personal expenses, like holiday trips, raising serious concerns about financial transparency.

As a result, many contributors teamed up and forked the project, establishing CoMaps, a new alternative focused on openness and being not-for-profit.

Good to see devs willing to do the work needed in order to draw hard lines on the capitalist leeches that divert money away from the project. I am looking forward to the traffic system that they mentioned as a future option. Would allow users that are okay with turning on those features for adding crowdsourced traffic data and stuff like marking cops posting up to get their quotas.

Literally the only thing that keeps me on Waze is that stuff. I have to deal with a lot of interstate travel to and from work and knowing that a big crash happened so I can re-route before getting stuck is crucial. I will still make sure to have this installed just like I had Organic Maps as a good option. And to see what stuff I go to that needs to be updated on OSM and StreetComplete. Had to add all of the addresses on my street on OSM a while ago just to be able to correctly enter my address. One of those addresses that is listed as one town for mailing and is technically within the borders of a smaller one with regards to utilities and plots of land.

Quick heads up for anyone running verbose NextDNS configs, you’ll need to add an exception for this entry currently to start the initial download