Surprising to see competition in a space that is so dominated by Google. I hoped it’d be some open source endeavor, but seeing the link was Forbes I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up... that said competition and options is good!
Mapzen, a now sadly defunct mapping startup, released all of its software open-source, including WebGL mobile and browser SDKs, map tile rendering, search and routing. Take a look at:
A huge amount of Mapbox's tech is open source, including the entirety of their WebGL rendering engine. They rely heavily on OpenStreetMap, which is all open data.
One of the great features of tangram is to embed any glsl shader in the scene file, which gets injected during rendering and "transforms" the map rendering and the map experience to a all new level, giving the some great flexibility cartographer/designer/developer will like.
Tangram had some great consumer base including this amazing project called StreetComplete (https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/). Check it out and use it to improve osm street data.
Also mapzen's geocode engine Pelias, continues to live as geocode.earch, which it out at https://geocode.earth/.
Disclamer, I used to work for mapzen on the tangram-es (native rendering) project and still supporting the project in the open source world (along with other tangram-es developers).
If anyone interested has any questions, you can contact me @tallytalwar on twitter.
