this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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What you're asking for is fairly unrealistic. The only way this could work sustainably would be for something to exist where you host your own tile server and routing service and patch that into OSM. Otherwise, even if the app itself is open source, the backend will cost money to run and will be proprietary.
The reason that OSM is able to be fully open source is because you host the tiles on your phone and do the routing calculations locally.
I can't think of any reason the backend can't be open-source too.
It costs money to host something like that. You want low latency, real-time routing and tile-rendering? Even more money. Sure, it could be funded by donations or something like that, but I'm not holding my breath.
Could be self hosted
If you're willing to spend all the money on setting up and running a server, why not just spend way less money to get more phone storage and use OSM?
Setting up a server just for this is clearly overkill, but if you already have a homeserver it would be great to be able to deploy the backend. Sadly there is no such thing currently
I totally agree. Running a server on a home machine that's already running 24/7 is trivial. I don't know why this guy is acting like it's a big deal. I've got a $100 mini-PC running multiple servers already. What's one more?
It's not a BIG deal. I self-host a ton of stuff. It's just a bigger deal than spending a bit more for phone storage for the vast majority of people.
This is true for literally every selfhosted app
I agree. Hence why I wondered why that would be an acceptable option compared to simply changing OPs posted requirements for far less cost and headache.
Not necessarily. Most people in the US are locked into some kind of ridiculous contract that makes swapping/upgrading their phone a pain in the ass and a financial burden. To be fair, these same types of people probably lack the ability to run a home server so maybe my point is moot 😅
That doesn't have anything to do with whether it's open-source or not.
The correlation is high.
What is the cost of hosting a server like this? I'd imagine someone could cloud host it at a cost of $10/mo and sell the online service at $1-$2/mo, which would take very few users to turn a profit. If the code is FOSS, some people would be willing to pay for the service.
https://wcedmisten.fyi/post/self-hosting-osm/
The main problem is that this type of service requires way more RAM and disk space than most other popular self-hosted services. You CAN do it, it's just not practical.
You're right. There is (are?) an open source web interface to OSM. Technically, someone could host that themselves, and the app is just the web browser.
The real reason that it's not common is because there's no demand; or, at least, not enough for anyone to take the effort to package it up in an easy-to-deploy, well documented release. And demand is low because having offline, local tiles is almost always preferrable to nav or maps that require relatively heavy, constant internet access.