We welcome and appreciate the conflict mediation effort by the NLnet foundation (who have also provided grants to Organic Maps before).
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There is no answer to the Letter by Alexander Borsuk @biodranik.
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Roman Tsisyk @rtsisyk has published his answer in team Zulip chat, please read a copy #10555 (comment). He proposes to bring Organic Maps under an established non-profit umbrella organization like the Software Freedom Conservancy or Software in the Public Interest. We welcome this move as we made the same suggestion in the Letter, and we've been considering non-profit umbrellas as a "home" for a potential community fork. So we will gladly join a working group Roman has suggested to form as a first step.
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Viktor Govako @vng has posted his answer in the Organic Maps Telegram chat (https://t.me/organicmaps/52328):
- Roman took away my access to all key resources of Organic Maps without my consent and refused to return it back. Github blocking in March was also a result of his actions.
- I decided that I will no longer work with Roman in any format.
- Roman offered to buy out his share in Organic Maps OÜ so that he could leave the OM project.
- The offer to buy out the shares was sent to Roman's lawyer three weeks ago. I have not received any clear response or counter-offer yet.
- I had a conversation with NLNet where they offered to help in this situation. I will not refuse the idea of non-profit or some hybrid if it helps to conclude a “divorce” deal with Roman.
In addition Viktor has made some statements in the Russian-speaking OM Telegram chat, some of which we find significant (from https://t.me/OrganicMapsRu/78976 and onwards):
"Organic Maps now is a commercial company with an open source project" and its been like that since the company's inception and from Viktor's point of view the single mention of the Organic Maps OÜ name in the organicmaps.app website footer is enough information to convey the commercial nature of the project to the contributors.
Also Viktor has disclosed some more details about donations spending over past years (https://t.me/OrganicMapsRu/78745) and now there is an agreement both from Viktor and Roman to disclose full historic financial details to a few select community contributors. We welcome this first step towards financial transparency!
Unfortunately, Viktor's answer concerns itself with the state of his conflict with Roman but it doesn't really acknowledge or address concerns and questions raised in the Letter.
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We hope that Viktor accepts a proposition to change Organic Maps to a non-profit organization and that words will turn into real actions without undue delay.
In the meantime we will continue community fork preparations, as our community deserves an actively-developed app not stalled by disagreements and uncertain negotiations. Even if/when the fork is launched it won't close the door for negotiations and cooperation, e.g. we may decide to rejoin Organic Maps if it implements compatible principles and policies eventually. Alternatively, we would be happy to accept transfers of Organic Maps assets/branding rights to the community fork.
We'll post an update on the state and details of the fork shortly as well as any new developments in negotiations.
P.S. there is a fake signatures attack on the Letter. More than 14,000 fake signatures were added in a very short time by an unknown party, all of them unverified and hence not listed. We also unfortunately have no way to edit or remove spammy/abusive signatures. As of this update there were 179 verified signatures (thank you!).
