Building a New Rendering Backend for MapLibre Native: Industry Collaboration in FOSS
07-03, 12:00–12:30 (Europe/Tallinn), Destination Earth (Van46 ring)

Fostering organic contributions from volunteers is sometimes seen as the only path towards a sustainable FOSS project. This talk will challenge that common wisdom. We will look at some of the engineering and the organization behind a complex year-long project: building a new rendering backend for MapLibre Native. This was delivered by a team of professional graphics engineers in a collaboration with AWS and Meta. What can other FOSS projects learn from this success story?

See also: Slides (7.1 MB)

Bart Louwers is maintainer of MapLibre Native, a vector-tile based map renderer written in C++. He has a passion for FOSS and maps, but he's a definitely still a GIS rookie. In his free time you can occasionally find him on a bike or in a kayak or playing Ark Nova. Bart is Dutch and lives in Germany.