Hello Everyone,

Here is a proposal for Baremaps, a toolkit and a set of infrastructure 
components for creating, publishing, and operating online maps. The proposal is 
published on the wiki [1] and a demonstration of our base map is available 
online [2].

The key challenge for Baremaps will be to create a sustainable community. We 
appreciate anyone who would be willing to support us with bug reports, code, 
mentoring or feedback.

[1] - https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Baremaps+Proposal
[2] - https://demo.baremaps.com/

Best regards,

Bertil Chapuis

----

Baremaps Proposal

= Abstract =
Apache Baremaps is a toolkit and a set of infrastructure components for 
creating, publishing, and operating online maps.

= Proposal =
Apache Baremaps is a toolkit and a set of infrastructure components for 
creating, publishing, and operating online maps. It provides a data pipeline 
enabling developers to build maps with different data sources. It offers live 
reload capabilities that allow cartographers to customize the content and the 
style of a map. It includes an attribution-free map schema and style that 
stimulates derived work. Finally, it provides services commonly used in online 
maps, such as location search and IP to location.

== Background ==
The infrastructure components required to publish and operate large-scale 
online maps are often closed-source, heterogeneous, complex, and expensive. For 
instance: the visualization of maps in Web browsers or on mobile devices 
requires processing and tiling large spatial datasets, such as OpenStreetMap; 
the location of users based on their IP addresses requires aggregating and 
merging data from network information centers; the ability to search in a map 
requires indexing features based on text and spatial attributes in different 
languages.

== Rationale ==
Web mapping infrastructure is often managed by large teams of developers (e.g., 
Google Maps, Apple Maps, Mapbox, etc.), which makes it hard to customize and 
evolve. Apache Baremaps is a Web mapping infrastructure for the rest of us: it 
enables individuals and small teams of developers to regain control over 
spatial data and to develop custom mapping experiences. As a result, Apache 
Baremaps facilitates innovation in niche areas where resources are limited and 
customization is needed (e.g., sustainable mobility, civil engineering, urban 
planning, environment monitoring, startups, etc.).

== Initial Goals ==
The primary goals are:
- to release a customizable attribution-free map schema and style;
- to publish a tiled world map in different formats (mvt, png, 3D Tiles Next, 
etc.);
- to grow the community and attract new contributors;
- to release additional services and components (IP to location, location 
search, etc.).

== Current Status ==

=== Meritocracy ===
Baremaps is a project initially developed by Bertil Chapuis. It has already 
attracted outside contributors. Therefore, the process of electing new 
committers and project management committee members should be natural.

=== Community ===
The need for Web mapping infrastructure is great, hence a good potential for a 
diverse community mixing developers and cartographers.

=== Core Developers ===
The contributors to Baremaps include developers from academia and industry, 
mainly located in Europe. The contributions include documentation, bug fixes, 
and new features. Most of the development and communication currently takes 
place on GitHub.

=== Alignment ===
Many critical components used in the geospatial community are released under 
LGPL (e.g., Geotools, Geotoolkit). We are strongly aligned with the terms of 
the Apache license. Joining the geospatial community at Apache will enable us 
to be less reliant on components with contaminating licenses. For instance, 
Apache SIS seeks to become an alternative to Geotools and Geotoolkit.

== Known Risks ==

=== Project Name ===
No trademark is associated with the Baremaps name, and the project is already 
well referenced by search engines. The .com, .org, and .net domains are the 
property of Bertil Chapuis, who agrees to transfer them to the Apache Software 
Foundation unconditionally upon request.

=== Orphaned Products ===
There is a risk of being orphaned due to the small number of committers. Even 
if the main contributor has no plan to leave the project, this is a problem we 
need to address in the future.

=== Inexperience with open source ===
The initial committers contributed to open source projects in the past but have 
only a few experiences with the governance of open source projects in a 
Foundation such as Apache.

=== Length of incubation ===
We expect to achieve most of the initial goals within one year. However, some 
other goals (e.g., growing a community sufficiently diverse and healthy to 
leave the incubator) are harder to estimate and may span over a more extended 
time.

=== Homogenous Developers ===
Most current developers work for the same institution (University of Applied 
Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland). We also started receiving 
contributions from individuals and companies (e.g., Camptocamp).

=== Reliance on Salaried Developers ===
Baremaps started as a hobby project. The geocoder and IP to location components 
are the results of experiments conceived during research and educational 
projects. The HTTP component was part of an R&D project at camptocamp.

=== Relationships with Other Apache Products ===
Apache Baremaps relies on other Apache projects to achieve its goals. Apache 
SIS is used to import spatial data (e.g., Shapefile, GeoPackage, GeoJSON) in 
PostGIS. Apache Lucene is used for indexing text and spatial attributes. Apache 
Calcite may be considered as an alternative to PostGIS in the future.

=== An Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ===
The geospatial community regularly encounters licensing problems. For instance, 
Mapbox recently got closed source and forked into the MapLibre project. The 
storage components of Apache SIS, which overlap with other projects under LGPL 
in terms of functionality, take time to develop. The most popular open source 
map schema for vector tiles is currently released with a CC-BY license that 
discourages derivative work. We are interested in joining the ASF because it 
sets a high bar for including third-party libraries. In the long term, this 
will benefit our contributors, our users, and, more generally, the geospatial 
community.

== Documentation ==
The documentation of baremaps can be found at: https://www.baremaps.com/

== Initial Source ==
The source code of baremaps can be found at: 
https://github.com/baremaps/baremaps

The base map can be found at: https://github.com/baremaps/baremaps/tree/main/map

== External Dependencies ==
To our knowledge, none of the dependencies currently used in our main branch 
are a matter of concern (BSD, MIT, Apache).

== Cryptography ==
There is no cryptography required in Apache Baremaps at present time.

= Required Resources =

== Mailing lists ==
baremaps-...@incubator.apache.org
baremaps-u...@incubator.apache.org
baremaps-comm...@incubator.apache.org
baremaps-priv...@incubator.apache.org

== Git Repositories ==
We would like to transfer our current github repository to the apache 
organization.

Source: https://github.com/baremaps/baremaps

Target: https://github.com/apache/baremaps

== Issue Tracking  ==
We currently use GitHub to manage the issues and would also appreciate using a 
GitHub project.

https://github.com/orgs/apache/projects

== Initial Committers ==
Names of initial committers with affiliation and current ASF status:
- Bertil Chapuis (Heig-vd), Apache Committer, id: bchapuis
- Andrea Borghi (Camptocamp)
- James Smith (Heig-vd)
- Antoine Drabble (Heig-vd)

= Sponsors =

== Champion ==
Bertrand Delacretaz

== Mentors ==
Martin Desruisseaux
George Percivall
Julian Hyde

== Sponsoring Entity ==
The Apache Incubator




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