It is pretty interesting because it is true that design is better solo'd than committee'd. I wonder how open source communities usually solve these issues.
What's up: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/projects/16883
and an example of major UI discussion that you are interested in: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/issues/348
I use it since the fork and love their energy and tempo. It's amazing when you take into account it's history, that it was closed source at some point (maps.me), opensourced, forked...
> It is pretty interesting because it is true that design is better solo'd than committee'd.
This applies to all manner of "design", especially when it's at the edge/interface, which includes humans interfacing with a tool, but also with interfaces such as APIs. It's hard to maintain consistency and coherency and vision in the design of anything when it's committee'd and/or a free-for-all.
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43961908 (206 comments, May 2025)
That having been said, we could use better solutions than trusting huge megacorps with a task as vital as mapping and directions, so I want them to succeed.
Its just too difficult to manage _alone_ as an open source or not-for profit project or even a subscription based thing. Though there are nice niche alternatives like alltrails, nothing complete exists IIUC.
A company will have to have a solid adjacent source of income to support such massive projects, analogously to like how rust is paid for by mozilla by money from their other sources(like browser rev sharing). But as a new company, criticially, that rev stream cannot be _easily_ made from people's location data _alone_, not only because of privacy concerns, but because location product market is quite fragmented with 1000's of different products and it would become hard to scale those products to match the revenue stream needed to keep this kind of massive product alive.
I feel that at this point this service is so critical it could be provided as a utility.
They are reachable by bikes on the map because of your add a stop they will bring you there, then back, even if the obvious route through the forest or park is better
Krasnol•2mo ago
I hope that one day, in a distant future, humanity will experience an awakening and finally rise against the destructive traits we inherited from our long-gone ancestors.
Maybe bio-hacking will come to our help...but probably it will make everything worse first.
Related: https://newatlas.com/biology/evolution-modern-life-anthropoc...
Liquix•2mo ago
bondarchuk•2mo ago
mcdonje•2mo ago