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"Mapbox proudly embraces our open source roots" http://www.mapbox.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/about/open/ http://www.mapbox.com.s3-website-us-east-1

"Mapbox proudly embraces our open source roots" http://www.mapbox.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/about/open/ http://www.mapbox.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/abo...

tmcw 6y ago
I wrote that paragraph and I agree with the decision to change GL JS's licensing.
- kylebarron 6y ago
  I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this. Was it wrong to openly license v1? Or the market changed enough from v1 to v2 that necessitated this change?
- themakermark 6y ago
  I'd be interested to hear why. I have no problem with companies choosing not to open source in the first place, it is just the idea of taking an open source project with an active community around it and closing it up that is a tough pill to swallow.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tmcw 6y ago
    I won't get into all the context, but I think we should consider whether a community without contributors is a community. GL JS never had major active contributors outside of the company, and there are no self-funded webgl experts with lots of time who are ready to maintain a fork. OSS, we hoped, was about enabling people and unlocking people's ability to collaborate. It turns out that in 2020, it's mostly helping companies and getting nothing in return. That's not a dynamic you can build a sustainable business on.
    - infoseek12 6y ago
      An incredible ironic statement since what you’ve done is only possible because of open source. If you don’t realize that taking a huge dump on the open source community will have profound consequences for Mapbox then you’re in for a surprise.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - mousebirdc 6y ago
        It won't make much difference. The damage is done, Mapbox has remade the community in its image and we can only live in that world.
        lukeqsee 6y ago
        Communities have a way of escaping corporate thinking, when enough of us agree on something. :)
        infoseek12 6y ago
        You may be right, it’s certainly a complex area. But I do think this will put a lot of wind in the sails of Mapbox’s competitors. The inevitable fork of version one will serve most people’s needs and it may pick up some real momentum. But most of all, I think the move will generate an incredible amount of ill will in the developer community. Who would trust Mapbox after this kind of bait and switch? Why would anyone use anything coming out of Mapbox if they have any kind of alternative?
    - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
      It's certainly true that GL JS and Native never really got third-party contributors, and that the complexity of the task is a major reason; like you say, there aren't many GL hobby devs. Another reason is that they're simply great libraries and there hasn't been that much reason for anyone to contribute - I can only ever recall encountering one significant issue and it wasn't a showstopper. But there's more to it. When the roadmap of an open-source project is tightly controlled by a sponsor, that can make third-party contributions hard or impossible. I know OSRM much better than MBGL so I'll cite an example from that - the distance matrix issue. This is massive for many users, plays right to OSRM's strengths, but Mapbox wouldn't accept patches to provide it for _years_. IIRC it only got in when Mapbox's attention shifted to Valhalla. I'm not blaming the Mapbox devs at all for that; it wasn't important for Mapbox's business, and any extra code inevitably brings a maintenance burden. But it partly explains why third-party contributors are reluctant to contribute when the roadmap's out of their control. Back on MBGL, there was/is a community, but the community formed around MVT rather than MBGL specifically - again, possibly because MBGL is just so good. https://github.com/mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles https://github.com/mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles sums up the enormous community energy in the space (I think that might be your document originally, apologies if not). It's kind of a shame that MBGL being so far ahead of everything else has probably crimped development on alternative renderers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

"Mapbox proudly embraces our open source roots" http://www.mapbox.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/about/open/ http://www.mapbox.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/abo...

tmcw 6y ago

I wrote that paragraph and I agree with the decision to change GL JS's licensing.

kylebarron 6y ago
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this. Was it wrong to openly license v1? Or the market changed enough from v1 to v2 that necessitated this change?
themakermark 6y ago
I'd be interested to hear why. I have no problem with companies choosing not to open source in the first place, it is just the idea of taking an open source project with an active community around it and closing it up that is a tough pill to swallow.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tmcw 6y ago
  I won't get into all the context, but I think we should consider whether a community without contributors is a community. GL JS never had major active contributors outside of the company, and there are no self-funded webgl experts with lots of time who are ready to maintain a fork. OSS, we hoped, was about enabling people and unlocking people's ability to collaborate. It turns out that in 2020, it's mostly helping companies and getting nothing in return. That's not a dynamic you can build a sustainable business on.
  - infoseek12 6y ago
    An incredible ironic statement since what you’ve done is only possible because of open source. If you don’t realize that taking a huge dump on the open source community will have profound consequences for Mapbox then you’re in for a surprise.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mousebirdc 6y ago
      It won't make much difference. The damage is done, Mapbox has remade the community in its image and we can only live in that world.
      - lukeqsee 6y ago
        Communities have a way of escaping corporate thinking, when enough of us agree on something. :)
      - infoseek12 6y ago
        You may be right, it’s certainly a complex area. But I do think this will put a lot of wind in the sails of Mapbox’s competitors. The inevitable fork of version one will serve most people’s needs and it may pick up some real momentum. But most of all, I think the move will generate an incredible amount of ill will in the developer community. Who would trust Mapbox after this kind of bait and switch? Why would anyone use anything coming out of Mapbox if they have any kind of alternative?
  - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
    It's certainly true that GL JS and Native never really got third-party contributors, and that the complexity of the task is a major reason; like you say, there aren't many GL hobby devs. Another reason is that they're simply great libraries and there hasn't been that much reason for anyone to contribute - I can only ever recall encountering one significant issue and it wasn't a showstopper. But there's more to it. When the roadmap of an open-source project is tightly controlled by a sponsor, that can make third-party contributions hard or impossible. I know OSRM much better than MBGL so I'll cite an example from that - the distance matrix issue. This is massive for many users, plays right to OSRM's strengths, but Mapbox wouldn't accept patches to provide it for _years_. IIRC it only got in when Mapbox's attention shifted to Valhalla. I'm not blaming the Mapbox devs at all for that; it wasn't important for Mapbox's business, and any extra code inevitably brings a maintenance burden. But it partly explains why third-party contributors are reluctant to contribute when the roadmap's out of their control. Back on MBGL, there was/is a community, but the community formed around MVT rather than MBGL specifically - again, possibly because MBGL is just so good. https://github.com/mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles https://github.com/mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles sums up the enormous community energy in the space (I think that might be your document originally, apologies if not). It's kind of a shame that MBGL being so far ahead of everything else has probably crimped development on alternative renderers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]