this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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CoMaps

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Cooperative community open-source fork of Organic Maps, an offline privacy-respecting not-for-profit OpenStreetMap GPS app for your phone.

https://www.comaps.app/

https://codeberg.org/comaps

Matrix

founded 3 weeks ago
MODERATORS
zyphlar@sopuli.xyz
Sunshine@lemmy.ca
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Website Launched! (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 5 days ago by oleg_rswll@sopuli.xyz to c/CoMaps@sopuli.xyz
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We’re thrilled to announce that comaps.app is now live! Explore the latest updates about the app, features, and more on the brand-new website.

Check out comaps.app and discover how you can transform the way you navigate, explore, and share your favorite places. Whether you're a traveler, a local explorer, or just someone who loves maps, CoMaps helps you discover more of your journey!

Latest News: Stay up-to-date with the latest updates and development progress.

Community Features: Connect with people in the community on your favorite platform, and see what others are contributing.

What Makes CoMaps Different: See the ideas behind CoMaps Enjoy a sleek and intuitive design that makes it easy to find what you need.

What’s Next? Your feedback is invaluable, so please let us know what you think and what you’d like to see next. Join us on this journey and help us make comaps.app even better. Share your thoughts, experiences, and suggestions in the comments below!

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[–] starshipwinepineapple@programming.dev 22 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

For some background, it turns out organic maps had a for profit llc registered and long poised itself as free and open source. When the llc was discovered the community volunteers wrote an open letter

When their concerns were not answered they forked the project and created CoMaps which in theory is supposed to be everything organic maps ever portrayed itself as.

[–] morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 5 days ago (1 children)

clickable link, for the lazy https://www.comaps.app/

[–] Sorse@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

[–] wadasdwasdd@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago

ooop, that's not meant to happen 😅 have fixed now, thanks: https://codeberg.org/comaps/website/pulls/92

[–] morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 days ago

haha nice 😅

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Is this open source?

[–] zyphlar@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yep! Apache licensed, and unlike Organic Maps, CoMaps intends to incorporate a nonprofit or co-op soon with bylaws that the app can't be sold for profit. (OM owners are not denying their intention to eventually sell the app -- in this case, the user base and trademark and future updates, since the code is currently open, which is why we're making CoMaps.)

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I believe it's just a hard fork of organic maps since people have had issues with its leadership, so yes

(I think I'm using "hard fork" correctly there...)

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ty

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

You're very welcome! Hope you have a lovely day :)

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 days ago

Yes it’s on codeberg:

https://codeberg.org/comaps

[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

As i said in another comment, its just extremely hard to find the link to the repo

[–] zyphlar@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

Added to the sidebar!

[–] astro_ray@piefed.social 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Wasn't the website out for a few days now?

[–] walden@sub.wetshaving.social 10 points 5 days ago
  1. That's not very long
  2. It hasn't been posted in this community yet
[–] rozlav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 days ago (5 children)

I didn't understand what could be the difference between comaps.app & organic maps, does anyone understood ? Also I didn't find any git link but maybe I'm dumb x)

[–] eatham@aussie.zone 14 points 5 days ago

Nothing yet, it just started. But the difference will be that it will be run by a nonprofit rather than a for profit.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 days ago

It’s supposed to be more transparent and community involved.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Hopefully it'll have search that isn't completely unusably bad, like letting you navigate to an address while knowing if you've actually got the right one, instead of blindly guessing one of a dozen streets with the same name.

[–] Hellstormy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 5 days ago

Also searching for postal codes does not work on Organic Maps, which is a big frustration for me.

[–] lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Have you checked if the addresses you want to navigate to are on OSM? If not, you can add them.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

That's a separate problem, and I have experienced it. Many of the destinations I navigate to have only an street name, not a full address. But the problem I have is when multiple streets have the same name, Organic Maps (and it is definitely an OM problem, not inherent to OSM's underlying data) doesn't display sufficient disambiguating data to know which of those streets you're looking for.

Here's Organic Maps, with a search for a road I happen to know is a common road name in my area, without using one of the real similar examples that I've encountered (and which could help identify me). See how all of those examples say they're various kinds of roads in "Brisbane, Australia"? That's...not helpful. Because I know they're all in Brisbane. But what I need is to know which suburb they're in. Because I know I need to go to a particular suburb. The best option I have with OM is to guestimate how many kilometres away the suburb might be. Or to just guess and check if I've clicked the right one.

screenshot of Organic Maps searching for "school road" showing a number of roads with that or similar names in "Brisbane, Australia"

And this is what Google Maps looks like. Far, far more useful.

screenshot of Google Maps searching for "school road" showing a number of roads with that name in various different suburbs in QLD

For completeness, here's what I get in OpenStreetMap on the web. It's showing more useful data, with the suburb and postcode shown. But doing some weird things with which results it decides to return for some reason. Probably because it doesn't properly utilise location data. There are also multiple results of the same road (the top two, one says "City of Brisbane", the official local government area, and the other "Greater Brisbane", the statistical area used by ABS for census etc. purposes).

screenshot of OpenStreetMap searching for "school road" showing a number of roads with that name, the first two being the same road in Brisbane, Australia, the rest being in the UK

edit: reuploaded screenshots with precise distances covered up, for privacy reasons. Both OM and GM show the approximate distance, in kilometres, to each result.

[–] lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Interesting. Based on #6784 it seems like it's been known since at least December 2023. If they still haven't addressed it nearly 18 months later, that suggests it's not being prioritised very highly. Which, considering it makes the app basically completely unusable, is a pretty bad reflection on their management.

[–] zyphlar@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

Feel free to bug CoMaps about it! I agree but your specific examples and experience in Brisbane are very useful for testing. One big gripe about Organic leadership was the lack of progress and acceptance of pull requests, we intend to accept PRs much faster and easier than OM did and already have dozens of OM PRs to merge.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 6 points 5 days ago

Community run vs private ownership

[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You have to click on the how to contribute thing and then the bug submission subtitle and then it will bring you to a readme in codeberg where you can go back to the root where you will find the actual project. Idk why they made it so complicated... Link

[–] zyphlar@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Good feedback, would adding it to the "connect with us" social media icon lineup help? Or maybe change the wording of the link? Half the links on the Community page go to Codeberg, just documents on there instead of the root.

[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Usually projects have a direct link to the root to advertise that 1. They are open source 2. That you can contribute your own code and issues. Maybe on the section on the bottom of the page where you have home, news, community, donate, etc you could have an option named "source code" or something similar so its obvious. Just my 2 cents on it tho.

[–] zyphlar@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

Good idea! I've made an issue for it

[–] witty_username@feddit.nl 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

What's the business model?

[–] zyphlar@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Currently we're an OpenCollective project underneath the Platform 6 UK co-op. We intend to incorporate a nonprofit or co-op in a friendly country ASAP, help/advice with that is appreciated. Countries like USA, Ukraine, etc, are less preferred due to economic/currency/geopolitics/stability, but UK, EU, etc, have popular currencies and policies that could make it easy for the project's largely-English-speaking (but global!) user base.

Most money is planned to come from donations, and most development from volunteers.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 9 points 5 days ago

Volunteer work