Mapbox GL and licensing

[christop...@historicengland.org.uk]

Hi everyone,

I've been following some news and its unfurling consequences since it happened in December 2020 - the Mapbox GL licensing changed to be a little less open as of version 2.0.0, and other forks and options started to spring to mind instead of using Mapbox GL. Mapbox GL v1.x.x is effectively deprecated.

For example, the MapLibre project has started from a v1.x.x fork, and of course, there are other map libraries available (though I accept switching to something quite different is a big thing).

Has there been any consideration as to what to do with Mapbox at this point?

Many thanks,

Chris Dolby

Project Manager

Historic England

[chi...@fargeo.com]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for bringing this up this issue. It is a concern and we have given it a bit of thought. The good news is that mapbox-gl 1.8 is working pretty well right now, so there isn't any pressing need to move to a new package. However, we are keeping an eye on alternatives in case we do need to migrate to another solution in the future. Our main concern is that any mapbox alternative supports the mapbox-gl style spec. This will help ensure the switch is minimally disruptive to core Arches as well as any custom work that project developers have done for their own implementations. MapLibre would, of course, meet that requirement, so it seems like a very good candidate.

When the time approaches that we may need to change mapping libraries, we will definitely announce it ahead of time and we'll be looking for input from the community. In the meantime if people learn about projects like MapLibre that seem like good solutions, we'd love to hear about them.

Thanks,

Cyrus

[christop...@historicengland.org.uk]

Thanks, Cyrus.

I figured it was on your radar! Hopefully there won't be too many hurdles if/when the switch to something else comes.

Chris

[mr.ad...@gmail.com]

I assume that switching map libraries will be a lot of work, but I like the idea of a switch (back) to OpenLayers eventually. Looks like there is a mapbox plugin (GitHub - openlayers/ol-mapbox-style: Use Mapbox Style objects with OpenLayers), which would allow people to reuse custom styles that they have already built for Arches.