Apple to acquire Waze?

[Hai808]

Noooo! As an Android user this would not be welcome.

[DallasGrant]

Here are my thoughts on the possibility of Apple purchasing Waze.

First of all, I am not totally negative to this idea. I could see some benefits to this action, but I could also see some negative infractions from this.

Android support would not go away. For at least the past year, Apple has been trying to destroy the image of Google. What a better way to do it than aggressively pointing to an alternative to Google Maps while doing something that Google doesn't currently offer such as traffic reporting. I could actually see support for the Windows phone as it already has support for Blackberry, Android, and Apple.

I could easily see the editing by the masses be eliminated. In some ways I am ok with this, in a lot of ways I am not. The some ways are that it may stop people from making a complete mess of the maps. It may also start offering jobs to people who may like to do this for a living (sign me up please). I have fears to this because in a lot of ways the maps are good because of the masses editing, and in ways they are bad when an outside group that doesn't make the drives makes the changes. I have had complete road changes reverted to the original maps because the areal image shows different that the actual new road and these changes were done by an IGN editor that I know could not have possibly been in the area ... My fear is that we will be replaced by foolish editors such as these

At least the good thing I can say is that while Apple is a very profitable company, I believe that the 750 Million that is said to be the least Waze would like to accept could easily be too much for Apple to consider the purchase and the project would still stay in the hands of Waze and the community that helps fund it. That being said, I am going to say that Apple, with a proper plan, could easily improve this product and could turn this application into a major revenue building app

[chris_debian]

Hi, all.

Whether it is 'idle rumour' or not, I don't like the idea of Apple buying Waze, and agree with many of the points that people have made.

I see an 'up-side'.

The Waze v2.x code was based on GPL (open-source) code, and suddenly when it went to version 3.x, the source was closed (and all GPL code removed). See the forum topic here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16933&p=150861#p150861

The rest of this post is not meant to annoy the Waze developers, it is a natural discussion/ development around open-source code. Please do not be offended.

The potential up-side of Apple (or anyone else) buying the application, is that like many other open-source projects (eg Staroffice > OpenOffice (Oracle buy-out) > LibreOffice), the original code can be forked [0] and this will enable the application to continue, and potentially become even better than it is now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_%28s ... lopment%29

OpenWaze/ FreeWaze, anyone? Probably a different name, as 'Waze' is undoubtedly 'owned'. Suggestions? All this needs is a webpage, so that the project can be coordinated (Launchpad/ Sourceforge), some volunteers, a mailing list and then we can work out what code we can use. How easy/ difficult would it be to use OpenStreetMap [1] data, instead?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap

Just a thought; if anyone is interested, this would need discussion outside of this thread.

Chris.

[Norm95]

So false news. But look at the amount of free publicity for Waze. A lot more people are suddenly aware of it now.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57561 ... pany-waze/

Avoided a big one here. But seeing they were not even close I' agree with you there was an underlying reason for the story. . Back to Waze!

[bgodette]

Just a thought; if anyone is interested, this would need discussion outside of this thread.

And infrastructure is free, right? Forking a client is pointless when it has nothing to talk to.

[chris_debian]

Hi, bgodette.

Thanks for your reply. When starting to think about a project, it is useful to be realistic, but sometimes, this can border on pesimism.

Many projects start without a complete solution in place, and things have to be made-up as they go along. As the open-source community has demonstrated on many occasions, amazing things can be achieved if people are motivated. OpenStreetMap is a great example of this, and the underlying ethos is documented well in Eric Raymond's 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', a text that you are probably familiar with.

On a fork such as this, the most important thing is getting together a list of what needs to be done, and then finding people who are keen to see progress made. Getting a mailing list started can be very easy, and as mentioned before, Launchpad or Sourceforge can be used to coordinate things.

If anyone was interested in a fork, it would be better to have tried and to have failed, rather than not tried at all.

I won't take-up anymore time on this thread, as this will go off at a tangent, from the original subject, which is poor etiquette.

Thanks again for your comments, though.

Cheers,

Chris.

[Spazinbc]

INRIX just updated their iPhone maps and features. I must say it's definitely very good--finally. The user base isn't as high as Waze but they use other traffic data (besides crowdsourcing) so I can see them becoming Waze's Achilles heel.

[cherianchris]

I can see them becoming Waze's Achilles heel.

I beg to differ. Installed it from Play Store and was shocked to see it running google maps. Waze Map of Chennai is the most up to date today. And no points? Any incentives? Didn't see any!

Chris -> MB526 -> Tapatalk 2