UPDATE on Organic Maps and move to “CoMaps”:
First, my apologies for not finding and reporting the following information earlier. I clearly missed a significant issue regarding Organic Maps and its open source/FOSS status.
Long story short, Organic Maps is held by an LLC that claims to be open source, etc. but never solidified the stated intentions (ie. shifting to nonprofit) nor was transparent about their financials (including donations). Growing concerns in the community culminated in a signed open letter (16 April 2025). After unsatisfactory responses, the community forked Organic Maps within 3 months to a new project called CoMaps (July 2025):
To be clear, there is no indication that Organic Maps has done anything egregious with user data per se. It still repeats the same privacy focus and anti-tracking stance. After CoMaps removed Kayak links last year, Organic Maps soon followed suit. However, as CoMaps is more focused on privacy and answering to community goals, they have also worked to remove Google and other dependencies.
I am now working with CoMaps. It is very similar to Organic Maps with a few feature and interface variations. Tapping the menu icon (bottom, right) reveals only 3 of the 5 style/layer options that Organic Maps has (missing: Hiking and Cycling styles). CoMaps has fewer options in some of its settings categories (in-app menu), but the iOS Settings are the same. More features and changes are on the way as the development community charts their own course. I will say that I appreciate the CoMaps team’s transparency on goals, methodology and future changes.
I exported my Organic Maps favorites and imported them to CoMaps with no real trouble (except for iOS’ fiddly process for deciding when a file has been “recently” opened).
For reference, below is the opening summary from the open letter to Organic Maps Shareholders from April 2025. If you wish to see the full description of community concerns and rationale for splitting the project, check the link.
16 April 2025
Open Letter to Organic Maps Shareholders
Summary
Community contributors to Organic Maps have expressed serious concerns about the project’s governance, transparency, and the potential for shareholder profit at the expense of the community. They are calling for a shift to a nonprofit structure, greater inclusivity in decision-making, and financial transparency, and are considering starting a new project if these issues are not addressed.
I will make edits in my previous posts above to notate CoMaps.