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Honestly even reading his prior blog post and this together, his own outline of his position made me feel there was more to it. Like the way I read it, they had

by Macha 3y ago

Honestly even reading his prior blog post and this together, his own outline of his position made me feel there was more to it. Like the way I read it, they had a process of open contribution, and then they closed it down, partly at the author's suggestion, and then those contributors who felt the process was too onerous because of pushback against perceived euro-centrism of their contributions went and made their own projects.... which were more succesful for Europe and North America.

ozim 3y ago
Sounds like open source working correctly. If someone doesn’t agree they can always fork the project and aim for their own direction.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  Absolutely possible; that's not the problem here. The deeper problem is that Carto gets a free ride on the website as the incumbent house style. You can fork it, but doesn't make it the default style shown on openstreetmap.org. You could fork it, get popular community support, and still get nowhere except for wasting a lot of effort, because displacing Carto takes a lot of political manoeuvring as well as server resources for hosting the default style (which are not insignificant). If it was a matter of just forking it, and have the openstreetmap.org website maintainer pick it up if it proved more popular than that would be that, but given the fact that the one other Carto maintainer who seems semi-active is also a member of the OpenStreetMap operations working group (i.e., server resources), spending any effort on a fork with the goal to displace Carto seems pointless at this point in time. I prefer to spend my resources on just making the map better. Some people justly pick up their crayons and go make a nice thing elsewhere (like the Americana style), or contribute to the styles used by popular apps. For now part of the community just gave up on Carto and is waiting to see how developments for the new vector style will pan out.
- Sakos 3y ago
  And as always, forking might solve a specific issue, but creates so many new ones that it isn't such a clearcut and obvious or even sensible solution.

by Macha 3y ago

ozim 3y ago

Sounds like open source working correctly. If someone doesn’t agree they can always fork the project and aim for their own direction.

Freak_NL 3y ago
Absolutely possible; that's not the problem here. The deeper problem is that Carto gets a free ride on the website as the incumbent house style. You can fork it, but doesn't make it the default style shown on openstreetmap.org. You could fork it, get popular community support, and still get nowhere except for wasting a lot of effort, because displacing Carto takes a lot of political manoeuvring as well as server resources for hosting the default style (which are not insignificant). If it was a matter of just forking it, and have the openstreetmap.org website maintainer pick it up if it proved more popular than that would be that, but given the fact that the one other Carto maintainer who seems semi-active is also a member of the OpenStreetMap operations working group (i.e., server resources), spending any effort on a fork with the goal to displace Carto seems pointless at this point in time. I prefer to spend my resources on just making the map better. Some people justly pick up their crayons and go make a nice thing elsewhere (like the Americana style), or contribute to the styles used by popular apps. For now part of the community just gave up on Carto and is waiting to see how developments for the new vector style will pan out.
Sakos 3y ago
And as always, forking might solve a specific issue, but creates so many new ones that it isn't such a clearcut and obvious or even sensible solution.