I see two points: safety - bigger supply chain attack surface, and code bloat/compiler performance. The later has been discussed in numerous posts here (the whole idea of a linker from the start was to get rid of unused functions, so not a big problem imo). The safety is a serious and legit consideration, but we also rely on Linux and build tools to build things. How do you know the compiler that was used to build Linux hasn't been compromised, perhaps several generations ago, and now your Linux has a backdoor that is not in Linux source code? There was a research paper on this IIRC. We trust the ecosystem to validate each tool we use. We just have to do the same with our own projects - only use what's relevant, and we should do dependency hygiene to check if it is coming from a reputable source...

Just to set the record straight: MapTiler is *not* the maintainer of MapLibre. MapTiler is *one of* many participating companies in the MapLibre organization, which has a board and a charter [1].

Amazon has donated $300,000 to MapLibre, Facebook - $80,000, TomTom - $10,000, and lots more companies have donated. Most of the code maintenance is done by various volunteers and companies, e.g. Amazon has hired a whole team of engineers to work on MapLibre native, etc.

P.S. I came up with the name MapLibre, called people to unite around this effort, and am on the board of the MapLibre organization. [2]

[1]: https://maplibre.org/charter/ [2]: https://twitter.com/nyuriks/status/1336493514646052864

I'm almost too afraid to ask, but is WebGL rendering really necessary for displaying an interactive 2D vector map as opposed to using SVG or Canvas?

Is it, because sth. like a full street network layer would degrade performance too quickly?

If you want to display infinite fractional zoom levels, WebGL is mandatory. That's what most consumers will expect from a high fidelity map application, because that's the way Google and Apple Maps work.

High Fidelity.. Pity their road names don't zoom up to some degree.. it is so hard to read the road names, that as an old bugger i need a magnifying glass..

Not vector but raster with leaflet: would https://www.osmap.uk/larger-text/ (as an example) help in reading road names?

Infinite fractional zoom levels, right thanks.

I think running stuff like that on the GPU is just more efficient than running it on anything else.

I have proposed MapLibre as a new home, unaffiliated with any existing project, but at the same time inviting maintainers from everywhere, including OpenMapTiles (I'm a big contributor there), as well as other entities. So far a lot of positive response on twitter, hopefully it will pick up. See original post at https://twitter.com/nyuriks/status/1336493514646052864 (includes a nice reply from MapBox CEO)

Depends how you count - significant number of the staff (myself included) were first volunteers in the movement.

Everything is completely open. We use https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian which is Mapbox+Mapnik based.

Thanks for all your support! Means a lot. Clipped labels is a big issue, working on it. Any help is welcome with bugs and styling. Info is at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Maps . Will post updates on twitter @nyuriks. Thanks!