> Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted their lives to commit to the outdoor lifestyle and the dream job. Suddenly, they were left scrambling for new work and visa sponsors with just a few months’ pay as severance. The six bosses, meanwhile, pocketed an estimated 20 to 30 million euros each.
That’s why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work the minimum.
I'm gonna copy paste a comment I wrote yesterday that I think fits perfectly here:
As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are:
1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work.
2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open source and has some value/community outside of your employer.
3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5 years of your career.
If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely misdirecting your energy.
---
It sounds like the staff here thought they were in case 2, but they were not. I think that the article explains the reason why nicely: the thing they were building was not part of the commons.
I'm reminded of the Vshojo collapse just recently, where a whole load of people were convinced that not getting paid on time was a temporary necessity for growing the business.
Which promptly imploded, taking stolen charity donations with it.
There is nothing unethical about: you are doing the only sane thing in this system and economics. Morons, who work themselves to death believing bosses shit-talk about “our mission” and “we are in this together” will learn it the hard way.
In principle, we can imagine jobs that contribute positively to the world.
When a builder builds a house, or a doctor mends a broken arm, the community has one more home and one less broken arm - and the community is left richer even after the builder and doctor have been paid.
That house will be keeping a family warm and dry 20, 40, 100 years into the future, and the patient will be using that arm for the rest of their life.
I can see how a person with a job like that could take pride in the fact they've contributed to their community, in addition to the fact they've gotten paid.
Of course, a lot of jobs aren't that way, but have tricksy bosses who will try to convince you they are. Which is what it sounds like happened in Komoot's case.
As a warning: every time I’ve pushed hard, then had to rein it in and do less, I’ve gotten fired.
There’s nothing you can do that makes you irreplaceable, even if you’re the only one in the world that can do it.
It’s fine if you want to stay in your happy place as the only one that can do X and then keep selling them on the value you provide and how you’re doing big things. But, nothing lasts.
Don’t burn out, but sitting on your ass is a bad strategy.
Don’t do that then. Work on 90% with bursts of 130%. Don’t work on 120% all the time because it’ll be assumed you’ve gotten lazy when you just need to slow down.
> That’s why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work the minimum.
That's not unethical at all, in fact I think that's a highly intelligent strategy to look out for the little guy (namely you) in the bear pit of tech capitalism. Anyone buying into the "we're more than a company, we're family" schtick is just another sucker to be worked remorselessly to line the pockets of the VPs and C-suite.
My previous employers included me in their Director/VP meetings, and the family schtick evaporates pretty quickly when they start talking cuts. One VP in a meeting, quite literally, proposed laying off an entire team of veteran engineers (most with young kids) and the very next thing that came out of this doucebag's mouth was "are we ordering in some lunch?". They do not care a whit about you and once you realise that then you should just look to yourself first and foremost and forget accepting below-average salaries just for some "mission".
They will happily kick you to the curb for any of the following reasons, which I have personally witnessed in the past few years,
- Their pal is looking for a job that's currently occupied by someone else. So they fire and hire.
- They want to deflect blame for their own failures, so they fire a bunch of folks who had nothing to do with the failures.
- They want to appear 'ruthless' to the CEO, so fire people to enhance their own image.
- They do a clear out of their previous incumbents staff once they replace someone and bring in their own crew.
This approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for (say) public service organisations.
There's also the argument an abundance of cynicism - as well as being occasionally aimed at a misjudged target (eg you work for bosses who do try to do the right thing) - is corrupting to the self and wider society.
> This approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for (say) public service organisations.
This remark is specially apt with regard to the leitmotiv of TFA; one sees, indeed, an entirely different picture when the goal of an organization is something else than growing and making profits.
Of course the argument works for everybody who works in public service. You do the duties you are paid for. If you think that's not enough you are welcome to volunteer for free.
Somewhat disagree. If a public service organization is demanding more than that approach, it either needs to hire more people, or manage projects more effectively. I'll take a lower salary for public service, but it doesn't help anyone for me to burn out.
This is the approach that most workers took in our eastern European countries during socialist era.
It was shitty. Pretty much all services were terrible since people just did the minumum.
I've noticed US going down this path for a few years now and I can't figure out why in the frigging world would you cheer on towards such horrible society.
All the best places I've lived at were great because people cared about the jobs and other work they did.
There’s nothing wrong with caring about your job and what you do. Just don’t buy into any of the horse shit about missions and so on. The bosses are ruthlessly capitalist so it’s immoral to expect the workers to be any less self interested.
I like to remind those I mentor that The Company’s sole goal for their employment is to extract more value from them than they are paid - not because The Company is evil, but because that’s just what’s required in a capitalist endeavor. But, what it does mean, is that you shouldn’t feel like you owe any company anything - the goal of any for-profit corporation is to extract more value from you than they give back to you, period.
That depends on what you consider noticeable. A lot of things are noticeable (and noticed) on the local level. The folks that organise reading sessions with the kids a my sons school. The people managing the local hockey club. People doing local education in IT. Organizing the neighborhood meetup. The people that do hack and tell. Blog about what they’re doing by as fun projects.
They may not be known beyond their local communities, but they have impact on society. Most of them are contend with that. If you’re looking to change the world, then that’s likely not good enough, but then again, if you’re looking to do that it’s unlikely that you will achieve that as a rank and file employee in a corporation.
Bosses always want workers who treat their job and the company like family, but when it comes to them treating their workers like family somehow it is all about the numbers and they barely even treat them like people (if the law permits it).
It may seem over the top, but my feeling is we as a society need to stop accepting, excusing or even applauding behavior like this for our own good. This should be a stain on their names for the rest of their lives and the rest of society might consider treating them as outcasts.
I know this is an extremely unpopular position to take on a platform where half of the people dream of creating a company, pretending it is the mission of their lives, just to sell it to the highest bidder and live a life in luxury after. Everybody has to watch out for themselves they would say. If your goal is to leave the planet worse off than before that is the sure way to do it. This is a model for a society of sociopaths who kill everything good and it is time we start putting up some resistance.
Yup, when headhunters reach out with all these idiotic startups that I know full well are just playing the game of "see if you can bullshit long enough for someone to buy your useless company" I don't even laugh anymore, just shake my head. If you have real life obligations and can't afford to hop jobs every year, never work for a startup.
I felt betrayed as well. Just paid €30,- the month or so before because I liked the app and the service, but I also needed more maps. It offered great value to me. If I knew 80% of the employees would be fired, inevitably leading to a degrading service, I would have never done that.
It is weird, but I do not trust the app any more in planning routes either. Sometimes i have the feeling bugs in the planning part already appear. The stability of the service for sure decreased.
Also there are more nag screens about the premium offer (dude I paid for the other great offer already!).
Very unhappy with this. I hope the komooters build an alternative. I’m happy to support them. I know that eventually I might get betrayed again.
For today I planned another route with komoot. If somebody knows an alternative? I like the komoot user photos because it gives an impression of the (gravel) roads. Plus the suggested routes and the planning ux are great. Im stuck with komoot for now.
The article mentions one example: https://wanderer.to/. Haven't used it personally but seems promising (albeit less "social" than something like Strava).
Less "social" would be a feature for me. I just want one that can plan routes, track journeys, and give me directions. I don't want to be worried that I'm accidentally sharing what I'm doing/where I am with the world.
One only need a web server to share gpx files really.
Planning routes can be easily done offline with desktop apps. Don't even start with mobile use, I have never seen a web based tool where you could plan a route by tapping on a smartphone screen without pulling your hair out of desperation.
I've been using https://bikerouter.de/ to plan my ride and then import the GPX into OsmAnd~. Works quite well. It is possible to host brouter (which is what bikerouter is running) on your own http server.
In OsmAnd~ just remember to fix the track to existing paths, otherwise OsmAnd~ routing engine may have difficulty to guide you. I've never dig into it, but it looks like there can be a small offset between the GPX and Osm map.
I'm really happy with locus maps 3 classic in combination with brouter as a local routing engine with my own routing profile using my preferences.
In combination with downloadable map tiles, I can plan and ride my route completely offline which saves battery and keeps things running in the more rural areas.
The route planner is really nice. I actually plan all my routes in the smartphone and export to gpx if necessary because it's the most comfortable way to do it.
What I also really appreciate is, that it's not a subscription based payment model. So you pay once for downloadable tiles etc. and for the app and can just use it without worrying about updated terms etc.
BUT, and that's a major BUT, the version is deprecated and will be ended soon in favour of the subscription based locus map 4. I don't miss anything in locus map 3 and don't see any benefits. I'll just hope the app will work as long as possible without official support.
Friend of mine wrote this app[0]. It’s iOS-only (I’m not the target demographic, myself, but he works for a company that serves bikers, and is very much a fitness chap). It’s quite mature, and well-maintained. Personally, I know him as an outstanding engineer, so I’m sure it’s well-written. It’s been a labor of love for him, for over a decade.
I am quite happy with Wikiloc app. Feature wise it is not that different from Komoot and the yearly subscription which allows me to use it on my watch was only 20 EUR.
I'm quite unhappy with it, in Europe. It defaults to the completely useless apple maps which is unsuitable for outdoors and rural exploration, and its clustering of routes near each other is difficult to distinguish and click on. All trails had nailed this well by showing clustered trails together in a single point and letting you page through them.
I don't feel like I've been Komooted. There are alternative apps that I'll switch to.
However, it really sucks for employees. I know a guy who joined Komoot a few weeks before the sale, and who was among 80% fired right after the sale finalised. They've been negotiating the terms of sale and hiring people simultaneously -- that's just insane.
It makes sense if you realize that there's no certainty a sale will go through and you don't want to pause all operations with the blind hope that a sale will happen
Having said that, if someone just joined before the sale and is laid off, they should get a generous layoff package similar to longer term employees since they may have just quit a job to go there and are now back on the market.
Ironically, German law says that the first six months are a trial period for both sides, and you can be fired during that time with a two week notice for no reason.
Germany mandates two weeks' notice while person is on probation period, which is usually first 6 months. I haven't heard details about layoff package, but given sentiment I am not sure that it was great.
RideWithGPS. No affiliation with them, but have been paying for service for years. Far less glitzy than Komoot/Strava and far less paid advertising, but for my money it's better for route planning - particularly long distance off-road - than anything else I've come across [0].
[0] a) For instance Komoot's exports for GPS head units were not accurate enough to be as helpful with picking/finding faint/overgrown trails
b) RWGPS UI makes it a bit easier to work with OpenStreetMap's inaccuracies.
c) Its auto routing seems to consistently work a bit better than Google's if I want to ride on a roads where car drivers are less likely to try and kill me. (not sure how well Strava does this)
Komoot was located in Germany. Workers' rights are a bit better over here.
I agree that insane isn't exactly the right word for this. More like "assholish" -- this person has just switched jobs, and now they have to go through all this stress over again. This could have been easily avoided.
Never believe a company that you are part of a community if the content you create for them cannot be exported and published somewhere else. I am especially sceptical if someone says they never sell.
The users were always the real service provider. All the value is in what they tell each other through their data. All Komoot does is aggregate it, supply the infra structure.
The only way to stop owners pulling the rug underneath all this community given content is by keeping the content open source. Promise the users you will do best with their data by keeping it out in the open so that if you don't, someone else will. Keep the door ajar.
Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that humanity seems unable to do.
This happened to pinkbike.com when they sold out; you need to view these sites and communities as vectors. https://bikepacking.com is good right now and there are a lot of legit contributors who really care about bikes. This will change so engage how you want with open eyes.
About Pinkbike Trailforks, I submitted some trails to their platform to find out users needed to be logged in to download the GPX, also to discover they had edited the GPX XML to force/steal their own copyright on top of mine.
If anyone is interested i develop a free and open source alternative to komoot. I am currently using it for a 6 months trip in Europe :
https://github.com/Akylas/alpimaps
The idea of it is to be able to do everything offline, from map browsing to route computing, elevation profile...
I am 99% sure i use the same library for route computing which is the amazing Valhalla computing framework.
It propose multiple routes likes komoot, can show route stats, compute elevation profiles. But it can also do much more like compute different ascents or show slopes percentages without online data.
To use the full potential of AlpiMaps you need to generate your maps. I can generate them but i dont have the fundings to host the maps on a server (would need a lot of space and computing power to regularly generate maps per country, per regions ...).
Instead i explain how to generate the maps for any region you see fit.
Also AlpiMaps has a very small user panel right now so it had many bugs i am sure (especially on iOS which i dont use daily).
I am though 100% willing to fix/improve/add any feature. Just share/explain on github.
I am not often on HN so if you have any question please use github
I use Garmin so it may be different, but if Wahoo is like Garmin, you should be able to import a GPX file into their app and then tell it to sync to the computer, without needing Komoot to do the syncing. A bit more work but then you don't rely on Komoot directly to handle this for you.
Other than entirely community-driven projects (like https://wanderer.to/ mentioned in the article), are there company "forms" that legally protect against this kind of sell-out? Like non-profit or public-benefit-corporation?
If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they should have a way to hold the owners accountable.
In the UK a CIC (Community Interest Company) is an option, which can legally oblige the company to act in the interest of "the community they serve". I think in the USA a benefit corporation might be similar.
Alternatively if Komoot was a worker co-op a sell-out would only be possible with consent from the employees. Consumer co-ops (where users can vote too) are also an option but with more caveats.
Honestly it can be quite difficult, generally speaking the best you can do is release the data in raw machine readable format with a permissive license.
Unless you already have large interested parties "bribing" (not technically of course) the group of controlling members tends to be a weakness of anything crowd sourced.
Especially since it is rarely cut and dry. If the finances aren't working out is it better to sell and keep the site online or not? Are intrusive pop ups begging for donations a better option? There isn't a singular true best option.
There are non-profit corporations which seem on their face to address the issue, but not knowing much about how they work, it seems to me that it is often too easy to convert them to for-profit corporations, as happened with Raspberry Pi. I think in Europe a lot of open source organisations are "foundations" which seem to operate on similar principles.
IMO non-profit or charitable status is a must for sustainable, open, community-driven projects. One of the dumbest takes I often hear is "this for-profit corporation was good and kind before financial capitalism came along". Financial capitalism was always there, the for-profit corporation is pretty much a pure product of financial capitalism. Don't believe any for-profit startup that tells you it is all about the social mission, it is not. Even if the company is European.
I’d you do some research into non-profits you’ll find there are tons of entirely legal ways to milk them for profit, legally.
Easiest? Pay yourself a nice fat salary and use most of the rest of the money to hire “nonprofit management companies” which may or may not be you or your friends in a cheap costume.
A for-profit company, owned by a few founders, takes your data and provides no data licensing terms or contractual guarantees. It’s legally speaking their data. Everyone else has basically no legal rights to anything on the ”platform”.
Then they attract both employees and users due to their good mission, ”we will never sell”. Surprise! They sell and leave everyone hanging.
From a EU perspective I get it. This is upsetting and surprising even. But from a US perspective this is just business as usual.
That privately owned data is a pile of gold that grew by the day, eventually big enough to buy out even the most passionate and stubborn founders. The company was never what the author expected it was, even before the sale – it was a projection of what they wanted it to be.
I applaud the efforts to fix the business model and lack of data sovereignty. The more people that ”wake up” and understand the flaws of current system, the better chances we can fix it.
Say what you want of Bending Spoons, but they know what they're doing. They buy companies with a faithful user base that are losing money, and jack up prices to force the user base to show if they really are faithful. Then either they make money or they close the service, but it turns out it's the former more often than not.
For example, Evernote was losing money on server costs and after almost 20 years of existence did they really need a generous free tier to build up a user base? All that BS had to do for Evernote to make a profit was nerfing the free tier.
Without 20/20 hindsight, it's hard to be so sure about the dividing line between one epoch and another as time marches on.
For instance it took until about 2010 to confirm that we were already headfirst into the Garbaceous Period by 2005, but it was just not that obvious at the time.
Before you know it the Enshittocene crept up without fanfare but the type of extinction it foments might not have been possible without the decline in conditions that came before.
Readit News
That’s why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work the minimum.
For dreams and craft, I have my side projects.
As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are:
1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work.
2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open source and has some value/community outside of your employer.
3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5 years of your career.
If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely misdirecting your energy.
---
It sounds like the staff here thought they were in case 2, but they were not. I think that the article explains the reason why nicely: the thing they were building was not part of the commons.
For now it can work better to be a contractor and have your 'meaning' be a positive reputation in your industry.
More like being a medieval blacksmith. You don't mind what you're making, but you're known in your village by the quality of your work.
Which promptly imploded, taking stolen charity donations with it.
When a builder builds a house, or a doctor mends a broken arm, the community has one more home and one less broken arm - and the community is left richer even after the builder and doctor have been paid.
That house will be keeping a family warm and dry 20, 40, 100 years into the future, and the patient will be using that arm for the rest of their life.
I can see how a person with a job like that could take pride in the fact they've contributed to their community, in addition to the fact they've gotten paid.
Of course, a lot of jobs aren't that way, but have tricksy bosses who will try to convince you they are. Which is what it sounds like happened in Komoot's case.
There’s nothing you can do that makes you irreplaceable, even if you’re the only one in the world that can do it.
It’s fine if you want to stay in your happy place as the only one that can do X and then keep selling them on the value you provide and how you’re doing big things. But, nothing lasts.
Don’t burn out, but sitting on your ass is a bad strategy.
The recipe of success is also to do a little bit more (15%) than your colleagues, be reliable and punctual.
That's not unethical at all, in fact I think that's a highly intelligent strategy to look out for the little guy (namely you) in the bear pit of tech capitalism. Anyone buying into the "we're more than a company, we're family" schtick is just another sucker to be worked remorselessly to line the pockets of the VPs and C-suite.
My previous employers included me in their Director/VP meetings, and the family schtick evaporates pretty quickly when they start talking cuts. One VP in a meeting, quite literally, proposed laying off an entire team of veteran engineers (most with young kids) and the very next thing that came out of this doucebag's mouth was "are we ordering in some lunch?". They do not care a whit about you and once you realise that then you should just look to yourself first and foremost and forget accepting below-average salaries just for some "mission".
They will happily kick you to the curb for any of the following reasons, which I have personally witnessed in the past few years,
- Their pal is looking for a job that's currently occupied by someone else. So they fire and hire.
- They want to deflect blame for their own failures, so they fire a bunch of folks who had nothing to do with the failures.
- They want to appear 'ruthless' to the CEO, so fire people to enhance their own image.
- They do a clear out of their previous incumbents staff once they replace someone and bring in their own crew.
There's also the argument an abundance of cynicism - as well as being occasionally aimed at a misjudged target (eg you work for bosses who do try to do the right thing) - is corrupting to the self and wider society.
This remark is specially apt with regard to the leitmotiv of TFA; one sees, indeed, an entirely different picture when the goal of an organization is something else than growing and making profits.
Is this "we are a family here" for the people that don't fall anymore for the "family" con?
It was shitty. Pretty much all services were terrible since people just did the minumum.
I've noticed US going down this path for a few years now and I can't figure out why in the frigging world would you cheer on towards such horrible society.
All the best places I've lived at were great because people cared about the jobs and other work they did.
In very infrequent cases can you achieve any noticeable (for society) results without being part of a large org.
They may not be known beyond their local communities, but they have impact on society. Most of them are contend with that. If you’re looking to change the world, then that’s likely not good enough, but then again, if you’re looking to do that it’s unlikely that you will achieve that as a rank and file employee in a corporation.
It may seem over the top, but my feeling is we as a society need to stop accepting, excusing or even applauding behavior like this for our own good. This should be a stain on their names for the rest of their lives and the rest of society might consider treating them as outcasts.
I know this is an extremely unpopular position to take on a platform where half of the people dream of creating a company, pretending it is the mission of their lives, just to sell it to the highest bidder and live a life in luxury after. Everybody has to watch out for themselves they would say. If your goal is to leave the planet worse off than before that is the sure way to do it. This is a model for a society of sociopaths who kill everything good and it is time we start putting up some resistance.
It is weird, but I do not trust the app any more in planning routes either. Sometimes i have the feeling bugs in the planning part already appear. The stability of the service for sure decreased.
Also there are more nag screens about the premium offer (dude I paid for the other great offer already!).
Very unhappy with this. I hope the komooters build an alternative. I’m happy to support them. I know that eventually I might get betrayed again.
For today I planned another route with komoot. If somebody knows an alternative? I like the komoot user photos because it gives an impression of the (gravel) roads. Plus the suggested routes and the planning ux are great. Im stuck with komoot for now.
I have used brouter.de as a GPX editor instead of going on site to the route, and used Umap on OSM.ch to upload a GPX:
https://brouter.de/brouter-web/http://www.vintagemtb.org/mapshttps://umap.osm.ch/
Planning routes can be easily done offline with desktop apps. Don't even start with mobile use, I have never seen a web based tool where you could plan a route by tapping on a smartphone screen without pulling your hair out of desperation.
In OsmAnd~ just remember to fix the track to existing paths, otherwise OsmAnd~ routing engine may have difficulty to guide you. I've never dig into it, but it looks like there can be a small offset between the GPX and Osm map.
In combination with downloadable map tiles, I can plan and ride my route completely offline which saves battery and keeps things running in the more rural areas.
The route planner is really nice. I actually plan all my routes in the smartphone and export to gpx if necessary because it's the most comfortable way to do it.
What I also really appreciate is, that it's not a subscription based payment model. So you pay once for downloadable tiles etc. and for the app and can just use it without worrying about updated terms etc.
BUT, and that's a major BUT, the version is deprecated and will be ended soon in favour of the subscription based locus map 4. I don't miss anything in locus map 3 and don't see any benefits. I'll just hope the app will work as long as possible without official support.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/app/id605127860
However, it really sucks for employees. I know a guy who joined Komoot a few weeks before the sale, and who was among 80% fired right after the sale finalised. They've been negotiating the terms of sale and hiring people simultaneously -- that's just insane.
Having said that, if someone just joined before the sale and is laid off, they should get a generous layoff package similar to longer term employees since they may have just quit a job to go there and are now back on the market.
[0] a) For instance Komoot's exports for GPS head units were not accurate enough to be as helpful with picking/finding faint/overgrown trails b) RWGPS UI makes it a bit easier to work with OpenStreetMap's inaccuracies. c) Its auto routing seems to consistently work a bit better than Google's if I want to ride on a roads where car drivers are less likely to try and kill me. (not sure how well Strava does this)
To assume otherwise is foolish and naive. That’s simply not how employment works.
It is in Europe - one or three months are the standard notice periods I believe?
I agree that insane isn't exactly the right word for this. More like "assholish" -- this person has just switched jobs, and now they have to go through all this stress over again. This could have been easily avoided.
If this is the case, I'm just gonna sit on my ass this week and take my paycheck. If there is no long term assurance, why should I even try?
Never believe a company that you are part of a community if the content you create for them cannot be exported and published somewhere else. I am especially sceptical if someone says they never sell.
The only way to stop owners pulling the rug underneath all this community given content is by keeping the content open source. Promise the users you will do best with their data by keeping it out in the open so that if you don't, someone else will. Keep the door ajar.
Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that humanity seems unable to do.
To use the full potential of AlpiMaps you need to generate your maps. I can generate them but i dont have the fundings to host the maps on a server (would need a lot of space and computing power to regularly generate maps per country, per regions ...). Instead i explain how to generate the maps for any region you see fit.
Also AlpiMaps has a very small user panel right now so it had many bugs i am sure (especially on iOS which i dont use daily). I am though 100% willing to fix/improve/add any feature. Just share/explain on github.
I am not often on HN so if you have any question please use github
If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they should have a way to hold the owners accountable.
Alternatively if Komoot was a worker co-op a sell-out would only be possible with consent from the employees. Consumer co-ops (where users can vote too) are also an option but with more caveats.
Unless you already have large interested parties "bribing" (not technically of course) the group of controlling members tends to be a weakness of anything crowd sourced.
Especially since it is rarely cut and dry. If the finances aren't working out is it better to sell and keep the site online or not? Are intrusive pop ups begging for donations a better option? There isn't a singular true best option.
IMO non-profit or charitable status is a must for sustainable, open, community-driven projects. One of the dumbest takes I often hear is "this for-profit corporation was good and kind before financial capitalism came along". Financial capitalism was always there, the for-profit corporation is pretty much a pure product of financial capitalism. Don't believe any for-profit startup that tells you it is all about the social mission, it is not. Even if the company is European.
Easiest? Pay yourself a nice fat salary and use most of the rest of the money to hire “nonprofit management companies” which may or may not be you or your friends in a cheap costume.
> Unusually, none of the employees held stock in the startup
Sigh. Even with equity I’d question tying your purpose to the company like that. Without equity it’s just very silly.
A for-profit company, owned by a few founders, takes your data and provides no data licensing terms or contractual guarantees. It’s legally speaking their data. Everyone else has basically no legal rights to anything on the ”platform”.
Then they attract both employees and users due to their good mission, ”we will never sell”. Surprise! They sell and leave everyone hanging.
From a EU perspective I get it. This is upsetting and surprising even. But from a US perspective this is just business as usual.
That privately owned data is a pile of gold that grew by the day, eventually big enough to buy out even the most passionate and stubborn founders. The company was never what the author expected it was, even before the sale – it was a projection of what they wanted it to be.
I applaud the efforts to fix the business model and lack of data sovereignty. The more people that ”wake up” and understand the flaws of current system, the better chances we can fix it.
I once applied to their job listing. I adored the idea of working there. Now all I can think about is "I'm glad they rejected me"
For example, Evernote was losing money on server costs and after almost 20 years of existence did they really need a generous free tier to build up a user base? All that BS had to do for Evernote to make a profit was nerfing the free tier.
For instance it took until about 2010 to confirm that we were already headfirst into the Garbaceous Period by 2005, but it was just not that obvious at the time.
Before you know it the Enshittocene crept up without fanfare but the type of extinction it foments might not have been possible without the decline in conditions that came before.