Some perspective from a user who’s been on Magic Earth for well over a year:
It works very well. With a few quirks, it’s like 90-95% as useful as Google Maps for a majority of personas
It’s a mature app, finds most addresses (with possible exception of recent changes like a business moving)
Does surprisingly well with being current on traffic conditions
While not FOSS, they seem to be open about what they sell of your information and it’s in aggregate, so I’m much less worried about location data being tied to other online dossiers I’ve left in my digital paper trail.
I found that Organic Maps and OsmAnd+ just couldn’t cut it at all for finding addresses, routing wasn’t super great (or intuitive), and otherwise rated very low on family acceptance as a replacement for Google Maps. I used Acastus Photon for addresses and frankly it’s not that much better and the workflow was janky and pretty useless when you want to plot route waypoints. Magic Earth was the bridge between fully de-googling and having a livable acceptance factor. So far I haven’t seen them doing anything they don’t claim (not getting in trouble privacy-wise), so I’m good.
I would say “privacy friendly” is accurate in the title - but this is not FOSS. Even so for those looking to de-google without losing utility, I recommend it and am glad it exists.
Edit: I wish some apps (looking at you Starbucks!) would use a default mapping engine like Magic Earth instead of expecing Google Maps on Android phones (Graphene, Lineage, Calyx)
I agree completely with your review of Magic Earth. I will say that I keep some maps on my phone in Organic Maps as well. They are easier for me to follow when hiking on forest trails. When we went trailblazing on snowshoes, it made finding our way back to the main route simple.
Some icons of the undergrounds have different license. Read your first link carefully. And you link the source of the ui, or you don’t consider png files as “source”?
If it wouldn’t be foss, it couldn’t be built by the f-droid build system, it can only build foss projects
Publishing applications using the OsmAnd UI/UX code to Google Play, Amazon Market, or Apple Store must be done with written permission.
That’s why I linked the folder Osmand/tree/master/OsmAnd/res. It contains icons and XML files, which are used to describe the UI.
CC-BY-NC-ND is a non-free license. It forbids commercial redistribution and it doesn’t allow any modification of the files. OsmAnd further restricts what you can do, as it does not allow redistribution in the most popular app stores without permission.
If it wouldn’t be foss, it couldn’t be built by the f-droid build system, it can only build foss projects
The source files are publicly available, so F-Droid can use them to build the app, but the license restricts what you can do with these files.
F-Droid does not sell the app (non-commercial clause), is not modifying it (non-derivative clause) and is not listed as one of the restricted app stores, so it can distribute the app. But this does not make the app free and open-source software.
Aha, I see, you can consider it whatever you want, maybe the “not fully free software” would be a better term, but “not open source” is too harsh, because source is open, as you can see it, but doesn’t fit the definition of Free Software as defined by FSF. If you use requirements by FSF, please use their terminology as well, it’s confusing.
Some perspective from a user who’s been on Magic Earth for well over a year:
I found that Organic Maps and OsmAnd+ just couldn’t cut it at all for finding addresses, routing wasn’t super great (or intuitive), and otherwise rated very low on family acceptance as a replacement for Google Maps. I used Acastus Photon for addresses and frankly it’s not that much better and the workflow was janky and pretty useless when you want to plot route waypoints. Magic Earth was the bridge between fully de-googling and having a livable acceptance factor. So far I haven’t seen them doing anything they don’t claim (not getting in trouble privacy-wise), so I’m good.
I would say “privacy friendly” is accurate in the title - but this is not FOSS. Even so for those looking to de-google without losing utility, I recommend it and am glad it exists.
Edit: I wish some apps (looking at you Starbucks!) would use a default mapping engine like Magic Earth instead of expecing Google Maps on Android phones (Graphene, Lineage, Calyx)
Thank you for your feedback
somehow i got stuck on heads up display, and i cannot figure out how to disable it now!
Settings > Navigation > Car > Head-up Display
Legend thanks!
I agree completely with your review of Magic Earth. I will say that I keep some maps on my phone in Organic Maps as well. They are easier for me to follow when hiking on forest trails. When we went trailblazing on snowshoes, it made finding our way back to the main route simple.
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Maybe I’m misunderstanding it, but as far as I see it, OsmAnd’s non-free assets include the entire UI (layout + icons).
Since the UI of an Android app is an essential part, I don’t consider OsmAnd to be opensource.
Some icons of the undergrounds have different license. Read your first link carefully. And you link the source of the ui, or you don’t consider png files as “source”?If it wouldn’t be foss, it couldn’t be built by the f-droid build system, it can only build foss projectsEdit: i was wrong
The license contains the following clause:
That’s why I linked the folder
Osmand/tree/master/OsmAnd/res. It contains icons and XML files, which are used to describe the UI.CC-BY-NC-ND is a non-free license. It forbids commercial redistribution and it doesn’t allow any modification of the files. OsmAnd further restricts what you can do, as it does not allow redistribution in the most popular app stores without permission.
The source files are publicly available, so F-Droid can use them to build the app, but the license restricts what you can do with these files.
F-Droid does not sell the app (non-commercial clause), is not modifying it (non-derivative clause) and is not listed as one of the restricted app stores, so it can distribute the app. But this does not make the app free and open-source software.
Aha, I see, you can consider it whatever you want, maybe the “not fully free software” would be a better term, but “not open source” is too harsh, because source is open, as you can see it, but doesn’t fit the definition of Free Software as defined by FSF. If you use requirements by FSF, please use their terminology as well, it’s confusing.
Also please contact FSF, because they recommend this non-free app on their website: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Collection:Replicant-expanded#Navigation
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