[android] Maps application

Jim Ancona jim at anconafamily.com
Mon Dec 8 18:06:14 CET 2008


Cédric Berger wrote:
> I see no reason why google would not allow the use of this API. Not
> open sourcing it is one thing, but it is an important piece of their
> framework, and their goal is to spread the use of android and its
> applications...

I agree completely! Now if someone from Google would chime in... :-)

> I have installed Andnav 2. Looks really promising. I do not know if it
> can run without google.map API (since I did add the library for other
> tests....)
> Andnav1 was depending on it and its data. But due to licence issues,
> (for advanced use as navigation, offline cache,...), version 2 uses
> OSM.

It seems that Andnav is not open source, while osmdroid is GPL3. Same 
developer name in both places, so I'm guessing that Andnav uses osmdroid 
under the "I can relicense my code to myself" exception.

Apparently he plans to start charging for Andnav, but he's also asking 
for donations to fund a US server. Sounds like there's still some 
confusion about a business model.

osmdroid may still be a good option for an unencumbered Maps API for 
Android, especially if Google doesn't make their maps API distributable 
on devices running open source Android.

What I'd really like to see is a cloned (i.e. just change package name), 
open source reimplementation of the Google maps API with pluggable back 
ends that make it easy to use various map sources including OSM. I guess 
I should stop talking about it and start coding.

Jim







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