Organic Maps thinks that F-Droid has it in for them. (Untrue).
F-Droid labels anti-features, properties of an app which are contrary to the philosophy of FOSS in some way. Organic Maps is labeled for two things:
Promoting a proprietary hotels website called Kayak, by inserting links to it when looking at any hotel in the app. This is considered promotion of a non-free network. OM did not like being labeled with this anti-feature.
Relying on Organic Maps’s servers for downloading maps, without giving the user the option to change the server URL. This is called Tethered Network Service.
Tethered Network Service is a newly introduced anti-feature. This is besides the point, but before it was added, instances of this were labeled just “Non-Free Network Service”, which was ambiguous and caused a lot of confusion. The important thing is that it’s a new way to label apps.
The F-Droid app has a filter that hides apps based on their anti-features. The filter lists various anti-features to select, and an “Other” category for everything not listed. The new TetheredNet is part of Other.
Here’s the problem: the default filter used to hide apps with “Other” AFs. This default was changed some months ago, but only for new installations. Old installations, even if updated, will stick to whatever was the default when they were installed, therefore they will hide Organic Maps. Organic Maps made a big deal out of this, basically trying to shame F-Droid.
According to the latest F-Droid news, this should be resolved already or soon. I don’t know what the solution is, but I have a couple of guesses.
As for TetheredNet, it’s for a different reason. It’s not that it’s tethered to OSM, it’s that it’s tethered to Organic Maps’s servers serving pre-processed maps. (Organic Maps can’t fetch data from OSM directly)
“AntiFeatures:
TetheredNet:
en-US: Map download service (cdn*.organicmaps.app).
NonFreeNet:
en-US: Hotel widget includes a link to kayak.com not contained in original map
data.”
It’s new so I think more will probably be flagged later.
Okay, I had to search through a lot of hotels, but I was able to find this in the app. Weird.
It seems like any money they would make would be offset by users who are unhappy with the situation. I don’t have a recurring donation, but I’ve given in the past and this certainly makes me less likely to in the future.
F-Droid do provide more detail about why they warn that something has an anti-feature, but only make that easily accessible if you run their code natively on your device. If you’re on the web interface you have to figure out which of the links in the external links section isn’t actually external and look in there.
Their excuse for this is that their website can’t parse their own file format that they invented for themselves.
Oh, and they also deliberately buried the rollout of the new anti-feature in the middle of an obscure blog post rather than doing the responsible thing and prompting users to make a decision about it.
I would assume the same as the reason for warning about this in the first place? They don’t seem to like devs tying things back to preset websites and think it deserves a massive warning icon.
There is no option for a tiny warning icon, all AFs get the same treatment - this might be a bad design, but there’s no bad intentions behind it.
This isn’t about what they like devs doing. It’s about informing users about how the app works and what it does.
If they didn’t want Organic Maps on F-Droid, they’d just kick them off. There have been plenty of opportunities for them to do it and seem justified, i.e. “we are removing Organic Maps from F-Droid forever because its devs are constantly complaining, causing us extra work and drama in long fruitless discussions”. The opportunity to do that was explicit in the discussions and they didn’t take it.
They rolled out a massive new warning type and then didn’t have all their apps accept it as OK. That is a deliberate choice. It is their ecosystem from top to bottom, they *chose* not to have the TetheredNet added to the list of allowed warnings in existing installs. If they hadn’t wanted to make that choice they should have done the responsible thing and held the rollout until their app supported it.
Organic Maps thinks that F-Droid has it in for them. (Untrue).
F-Droid labels anti-features, properties of an app which are contrary to the philosophy of FOSS in some way. Organic Maps is labeled for two things:
Tethered Network Service is a newly introduced anti-feature. This is besides the point, but before it was added, instances of this were labeled just “Non-Free Network Service”, which was ambiguous and caused a lot of confusion. The important thing is that it’s a new way to label apps.
The F-Droid app has a filter that hides apps based on their anti-features. The filter lists various anti-features to select, and an “Other” category for everything not listed. The new TetheredNet is part of Other.
Here’s the problem: the default filter used to hide apps with “Other” AFs. This default was changed some months ago, but only for new installations. Old installations, even if updated, will stick to whatever was the default when they were installed, therefore they will hide Organic Maps. Organic Maps made a big deal out of this, basically trying to shame F-Droid.
According to the latest F-Droid news, this should be resolved already or soon. I don’t know what the solution is, but I have a couple of guesses.
Thanks.
I’ve never seen a kayak link. I can’t find an example or anything in the settings. Weird.
Is TetheredNet for the same reason or because the app depends on OSM data? Would that apply to every OSM based app?
Kayak example: https://omaps.app/w4CNuytXo0/Hôtel_des_Marronniers a random hotel in Paris. The big K icon labeled “photos, reviews, booking” or something like that.
As for TetheredNet, it’s for a different reason. It’s not that it’s tethered to OSM, it’s that it’s tethered to Organic Maps’s servers serving pre-processed maps. (Organic Maps can’t fetch data from OSM directly)
Ahh. That helps to clarify, and it makes sense. Organic Maps is always a few days behind on updates, and only pushes them out periodically.
@gedaliyah @NeatNit @openstreetmap
If you select a hotel found on Kayak it will add an affiliate link to Kayak in addition to the direct link stored in OpenStreetMap.
If you know to look in https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/blob/master/metadata/app.organicmaps.yml you will find:
“AntiFeatures:
TetheredNet:
en-US: Map download service (cdn*.organicmaps.app).
NonFreeNet:
en-US: Hotel widget includes a link to kayak.com not contained in original map
data.”
It’s new so I think more will probably be flagged later.
Okay, I had to search through a lot of hotels, but I was able to find this in the app. Weird.
It seems like any money they would make would be offset by users who are unhappy with the situation. I don’t have a recurring donation, but I’ve given in the past and this certainly makes me less likely to in the future.
@NeatNit @gedaliyah @openstreetmap
F-Droid do provide more detail about why they warn that something has an anti-feature, but only make that easily accessible if you run their code natively on your device. If you’re on the web interface you have to figure out which of the links in the external links section isn’t actually external and look in there.
Their excuse for this is that their website can’t parse their own file format that they invented for themselves.
@NeatNit @gedaliyah @openstreetmap
Oh, and they also deliberately buried the rollout of the new anti-feature in the middle of an obscure blog post rather than doing the responsible thing and prompting users to make a decision about it.
https://f-droid.org/2024/04/04/twif.html
@organicmaps is probably on borrowed time before it is also hidden from search.
It’s not deliberate. What is their motivation for doing that?
@NeatNit @openstreetmap
I would assume the same as the reason for warning about this in the first place? They don’t seem to like devs tying things back to preset websites and think it deserves a massive warning icon.
There is no option for a tiny warning icon, all AFs get the same treatment - this might be a bad design, but there’s no bad intentions behind it.
This isn’t about what they like devs doing. It’s about informing users about how the app works and what it does.
If they didn’t want Organic Maps on F-Droid, they’d just kick them off. There have been plenty of opportunities for them to do it and seem justified, i.e. “we are removing Organic Maps from F-Droid forever because its devs are constantly complaining, causing us extra work and drama in long fruitless discussions”. The opportunity to do that was explicit in the discussions and they didn’t take it.
@NeatNit @openstreetmap
switching topics again are we?
They rolled out a massive new warning type and then didn’t have all their apps accept it as OK. That is a deliberate choice. It is their ecosystem from top to bottom, they *chose* not to have the TetheredNet added to the list of allowed warnings in existing installs. If they hadn’t wanted to make that choice they should have done the responsible thing and held the rollout until their app supported it.