Why is Magic Earth free? What is the business model?
Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.
Will Magic Earth be Open Source?
No; since it is also used commercially (we have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners), we cannot make the code public.
Back in like 2010 that would have been 100% acceptable and welcome for me, but these days I’m very wary of a commercial entity going down the enshittification route, and having no source makes it so that if they go down that way you have no easy way out, you’re locked. I guess not being in the stock market is a positive, but nothing stops them from being acquired by somebody else who starts mining every byte of data…
From the FAQ:
Back in like 2010 that would have been 100% acceptable and welcome for me, but these days I’m very wary of a commercial entity going down the enshittification route, and having no source makes it so that if they go down that way you have no easy way out, you’re locked. I guess not being in the stock market is a positive, but nothing stops them from being acquired by somebody else who starts mining every byte of data…
There is also Organic Maps