joejoebags

I’m the Mozart of Mappy Think Pieces

In the US, I use AllTrails for hiking, which I think is built on Mapbox. Hiking, hunting, fishing, running, biking—all interesting examples of niche uses for maps that naturally lend themselves to separate user experiences.

Thanks for the thoughtful response! I don’t have anything interesting to add. I suspect you’re right!

What’s up HN?! Always fun to find an article of mine on here. What I’ve learned so far:

I’ve underestimated the important of their place data to the rest of the search apparatus, and likely underestimated the relevance of Maps to their autonomous vehicle strategy.

What I remain curious about that I’d love your speculation on: why do they bother with the Google Maps Platform at all? They have plenty of ways to monetize with ad targeting, so why go through the headache of opening it up to other businesses?

how would you prefer that sentence be written?

Allow me to be at your service: you are a grammar nazi

Great point. Are there any bootstrapped $1B+ open core companies? There are a surprising number of proprietary ones (e.g. Esri, Mailchimp, etc.)

I'm not super familiar with AGPL and how it might address this issue, but I would love to be enlightened.

Hi John--thanks for sharing these links. I do wonder if there is a fundamental difference between applications and infrastructure. Maybe it's the fact that applications tend to involve a greater share of non-engineering users (and therefore a greater reliance on someone else to host and manage the service)? Food for thought. GitLab is a great company, and I've read a lot of your strategy documents; it's a wonder you publish so much in the open, and I'm grateful for it.

Also--thanks for going on the record. You are right that you might be criticized in the future by nit-pickers, but it's much more satisfying to take public stances and find out what you're made of (in my opinion).

Thanks, those are great examples. I've considered writing about Mattermost before, as I think it's a fascinating pattern that I haven't seen much elsewhere. Attack an existing, high-profile app by cloning it in the open but then additionally build a for-profit company around the clone. Truly a galaxy brain strategy.

I like this article from 2014 that touches on some of the same great points you're making here: https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-wa...

I wrote it last night; I didn't have time to research every "open core" company I could think of to figure out a chronology of their licensing strategy. I decided to publish it based on a limited number of case studies to gin up discussion and hopefully learn from other people about counter-examples. Do you know of any?

You might be interested in Tidelift https://www.tidelift.com/

I'm curious about this too; I'd love some counter-examples and that was a big reason for me taking the rather arrogant stance of claiming "cloud killed open core." I selfishly wanted to rile up smart folks who could prove me wrong.

Interesting, I wasn't aware of this! I'm sure my colleagues on the Cicero team are, though.

Yes, via Mapbox's partnership with Unity https://www.mapbox.com/unity

They made an educated guess—-and they were right.

lol, you should make one! That might be nice for people who feel similarly.

Not a nitpick at all--interesting observation. Can you think of a better metric by which to measure contributions? (I'm truly asking out of ignorance)

Hello, HN. On the rare occasion my writing has appeared on the front page, the tone of some anonymous commenters has left me feeling indignant. Last time, someone called me a dog.

Please keep in mind that a fellow human wrote this piece! You don't have to be nice, but at least be constructive.

Ah ha! Thanks, I will make a note of it.

Thanks for the feedback, I updated it.

The original title was "WTF is Happening to OpenStreetMap" but I decided it was too clickbait-y. Interesting to learn that I used a uniquely American idiom--didn't realize that.