10/12, 11:40–12:10 (Japan), Room A (2号館 201)
言語: English
Why do some open source projects grow and become widely used, while others are forgotten?
PMTiles is a public domain format for storing and serving tiled map data. It is used by well-known organizations such as the Overture Maps Foundation and The New York Times. PMTiles is part of the open source Protomaps project, which has a small number of maintainers, but has achieved global adoption.
The reasons for PMTiles' success are different from those for commercial software or subscription services. In this talk, I will explain the main lessons from PMTiles:
• Keep the design simple.
• Make it easy for developers to start, with CLI tools and adapters for popular libraries.
• Use clear examples and a strong brand to show what makes it different.
• Give the community freedom to make their own versions and services.
• Let adoption happen from the bottom up, based on real use cases—not only top-down decisions.
Slides (English): Protomaps FOSS4G Japan 2025.pdf
I'm the creator and lead developer of the Protomaps open source project and PMTiles format for tiled map data. I've been working in the OpenStreetMap and web mapping tools ecosystem for over a decade. I live in Taipei, Taiwan.