Update provisional mission statement #149

pastk commented 2026年03月26日 12:01:09 +01:00

Important: the statement is provisional still and pending more discussion and a vote to become "final".
The proposed change is deemed as incremental improvement addressing the most of previously raised concerns/suggestions.

• Generalizes the statement to include more people regardless of the transport mode and circumstances used. Closes #93 ("pedestrians") and addresses "outdoors enthusiasts" #94
• Previous explicit easy and offline are implied by for people around the world and reliable and is to be elaborated on in user-facing app principles/guidelines #139
• more broad and unambiguous FOSS-values #94 (comment)

Update: offline retained explictly

Based on #139 (comment) and #94 and #70

**Important:** the statement is provisional still and pending more discussion and a vote to become "final". The proposed change is deemed as incremental improvement addressing the most of previously raised concerns/suggestions. - Generalizes the statement to include more people regardless of the transport mode and circumstances used. Closes https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/issues/93 ("pedestrians") and addresses "outdoors enthusiasts" #94 - Previous explicit `easy` and `offline` are implied by `for people around the world` and `reliable` and is to be elaborated on in user-facing app principles/guidelines https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/pulls/139 - more broad and unambiguous FOSS-values https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/pulls/94#issuecomment-5572082 Update: `offline` retained explictly Based on https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/pulls/139#issuecomment-12085740 and https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/pulls/94 and https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/issues/70

riadok commented 2026年03月31日 09:53:05 +02:00

I don't like the "offline" disappearing from the mission. I see it comes from #70, but I've not read through all of it yet.

For me offline is something that is very important for maps. And I know there are already some features in making that are hard to do offline, but I think the mindset should be that we should try our best to have it work as much offline as possible. I am afraid that when the offline disappears from the mission, the project will slowly shift towards the mindset "everyone is online nowadays, so why bother trying to make it work well when offline".

I don't like the "offline" disappearing from the mission. I see it comes from https://codeberg.org/comaps/Governance/issues/70, but I've not read through all of it yet. For me offline is something that is very important for maps. And I know there are already some features in making that are hard to do offline, but I think the mindset should be that we should try our best to have it work as much offline as possible. I am afraid that when the offline disappears from the mission, the project will slowly shift towards the mindset "everyone is online nowadays, so why bother trying to make it work well when offline".

gedankenstuecke commented 2026年03月31日 20:45:29 +02:00

@riadok I hear you about the importance of offline, I think once we start expanding it, by filling the single-sentence summary with more practical details, then offline-first will be one of the first things to be added in (eg as suggested in #139), as the global majority still doesn't have access to fast and cheap internet. 🙂

@riadok I hear you about the importance of offline, I think once we start expanding it, by filling the single-sentence summary with more practical details, then offline-first will be one of the first things to be added in (eg as suggested in #139), as the global majority still doesn't have access to fast and cheap internet. 🙂

zyphlar commented 2026年03月31日 23:33:35 +02:00

I'd personally say everyone, or people of all types, vs just people (by itself it's technically fulfilled by just us co-founders using it; we're a few "people around the world") -- it's not radical to make a FOSS app that's geographically diverse, it is radical to consider the needs of disabled people, women, people without electricity or cell service, people who speak unique languages, people without cars, people who can't read, etc.

I'd personally say everyone, or people of all types, vs just people (by itself it's technically fulfilled by just us co-founders using it; we're a few "people around the world") -- it's not radical to make a FOSS app that's geographically diverse, it is radical to consider the needs of disabled people, women, people without electricity or cell service, people who speak unique languages, people without cars, people who can't read, etc.

gedankenstuecke commented 2026年04月01日 01:00:33 +02:00

"everyone" is imho too broad, as you can't make one app that works for everyone and their use cases and still is easy/reliable/user-friendly, whatever the word we'd like to use. OsmAnd is trying very hard to do that - be an app for everyone - but it comes necessarily at the cost of extensive customization to make it work for "everyone".

I think focusing on removing geography as the dimension we want to make meaningless for CoMaps is already a big step compared to most other map applications - and one that's mostly aligned with what CoMaps (and to a big extent it's predecessor) have been working on as an implicit mission so far.

"everyone" is imho too broad, as you can't make one app that works for everyone and their use cases and still is easy/reliable/user-friendly, whatever the word we'd like to use. OsmAnd is trying very hard to do that - be an app for everyone - but it comes necessarily at the cost of extensive customization to make it work for "everyone". I think focusing on removing geography as the dimension we want to make meaningless for CoMaps is already a big step compared to most other map applications - and one that's mostly aligned with what CoMaps (and to a big extent it's predecessor) have been working on as an implicit mission so far.

pastk commented 2026年04月01日 09:27:07 +02:00

I put "offline" back in.

@riadok @jeanbaptisteC @mnalis @zyphlar @gedankenstuecke please take another look!

(please consider its an incremental improvement, i.e. let's try to move forward if its already better than the current version; otherwise we're likely to be stuck again with everyone pursuing on their own ideal definition)

I put "offline" back in. @riadok @jeanbaptisteC @mnalis @zyphlar @gedankenstuecke please take another look! (please consider its an incremental improvement, i.e. let's try to move forward if its already better than the current version; otherwise we're likely to be stuck again with everyone pursuing on their own ideal definition)

oleg-rswll commented 2026年04月04日 00:50:46 +02:00

reliable community-created offline maps and navigation

Right now this separates maps and navigation as distinct offerings, but CoMaps isn't the owner of the maps, CoMaps is a consumer of the maps, and doesn't really have the capability to make maps "reliable", which are owned by the OMS community. If there is unreliable data in the OMS maps, it's not the responsibility of CoMaps to change that (of course many contributors to CoMaps are also contributors to OSM, and will likely help improve this), but the primary offering from CoMaps is a navigation app.

How about:

reliable community-created offline map navigation

> reliable community-created offline maps and navigation Right now this separates maps and navigation as distinct offerings, but CoMaps isn't the owner of the maps, CoMaps is a consumer of the maps, and doesn't really have the capability to make maps "reliable", which are owned by the OMS community. If there is unreliable data in the OMS maps, it's not the responsibility of CoMaps to change that (of course many contributors to CoMaps are also contributors to OSM, and will likely help improve this), but the primary offering from CoMaps is a navigation app. How about: > reliable community-created offline map navigation

pastk commented 2026年04月04日 06:30:26 +02:00

@oleg-rswll good point, fixed, thanks!

@oleg-rswll good point, fixed, thanks!

pastk commented 2026年04月08日 18:54:16 +02:00

I'm going to merge this one on Fri - so last chance to object if anyone has a strong opinion it shouldn't be merged as is!

I'm going to merge this one on Fri - so last chance to object if anyone has a strong opinion it shouldn't be merged as is!