About Malfreemaps

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antyong (retired)
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Joined: Sun Sep 14, 2008 11:42 am
Location: Acquiring satellites....

About Malfreemaps

Postby antyong (retired) » Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:37 am

Who are we?
We are GPS mapping enthusiasts formerly from of GPSMappers.net and Malsingmaps.com. Our senior mappers (Sunn & OngCC) and regional mappers (robo, gerkeng & fancheng) form the core of this community. They spend many hours each week to update our maps based on feedback from MFM members.

We have an ever increasing group of Polygon Mappers. These members draw colorful polygons to fill up our maps, making MFM maps more informative and attractive.

Our Valued Contributors are located all over West Malaysia and Singapore. They patrol the cities of their residence to report errors and new roads or points of interests.

Our philosophy and objectives
We strongly believe in updating GPS maps and sharing it with members of the public. We do this as a hobby. We do not look forward to any monetary reward. Our own satisfaction plus appreciation from satisfied users are ample reward for us.

I also believe strongly in a community which treats everyone especially newbies nicely. Everyone is supposed to have fun with their gadgets and hobbies. So there is no point being hostile to those who are less familiar with online forums and forum etiquette. MFM values its active and contributing members more than its maps.

Our relationship with Malsingmaps
The senior mappers had formerly shared their maps under Malsingmaps. All contributors are members of both communities. We see Malfreemaps and Malsingmaps as two similar community providing free and updated maps to the public. The difference is merely the philosophy of their mappers. However, both community's mapping activities are independent of each other. You are encouraged to send your map feedback to both forums.

On March 14, 2009, we found out that Malsingmaps provided Garmin with our data to compile their Garmin-Malsingmaps. We found many traps which we hid in our maps to identify them. These traps could be found in Garmin Malsing NT 2009. Please read the details. Following this discovery and Malsingmaps' brazen claim that the data should be theirs, we no longer consider Malsingmaps a mapping community.

Our maps
Free MFM maps are released in a variety of formats. Most used and most popular are our map Garmin-formatted maps, MFM mapset and MFM-Lite map. Our weekly Garmin map release attracts thousands of download each week.

Our Papago-formatted map, MFM-Papago, are gaining popularity thanks to more advanced navigation features and value for money Papago devices. We also release our Papago map weekly.

Thanks to the effort of the people behind www.map4me.net, MFM is able to release maps that support Magellan devices. MFM-Magellan is the latest MFM map offering. Hopefully it will give outdoor enthusiasts another choice of GPS devices.

Our source data
We will rely on original source data posted by members at our MFM forum to update our maps. We will also rely on residual contributions under our old GPSMappers.net forum. In addition, mappers map with their own source of data.

If the source data is posted at other websites, mappers should obtain consent from the owner of the data to use them.

MFM is proud of its original work. We DO NOT accept data copied from other sources and take a very serious view against members who submit data that is not originally his/hers or data which is copied from other source.

Members have to agree that the IP of all contributed datas in the forum is belong to MFM.

How we finance this site and community
We receive donations to our hosting fund from generous members. Currently, we are using more than 200GB of bandwidth a month. Our primary site hosting package costs RM150/month. We had added another hosting package costing RM33/month to increase our bandwidth capacity to 600GB.

Our map compiler is obtained free courtesy of its author. We are very lucky for that because the compiler costs US$750. There is no significant cost requirement other than those listed. Furthermore, many members have offered donations to support this site. Financing this site is not a worry :D

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antyong (retired)
Site Admin (retired)
Posts: 1518
Joined: Sun Sep 14, 2008 11:42 am
Location: Acquiring satellites....

Re: About Malfreemaps

Postby antyong (retired) » Tue Mar 24, 2009 12:46 pm

During our Gn Ledang Mega GG on 21/3/2009, our senior mappers came together and agreed on the following points:

1. MFM is a free gps mapping project and will remain that way forever. We share our compiled maps freely with members of the public for personal use.

2. If MFM deviates from its original objectives, mappers (which are recognized as the copyright owners of the maps) and contributors will simply desert it and build another forum to continue the free maps project.

3. Mappers retain ownership over their source file (in mp format).

4. All our senior mappers agreed to allow MFM to continue the free maps project (by providing the latest copy of their map data) if they decide to go into commercialization or if they could not continue mapping anymore.

5. Continuity of the free mapping project is of great importance to everybody. Hence in addition to the senior mappers' pledge to provide a copy of their maps, we will take steps to ensure the forum and map compilation continues with or without Antyong. OngCC will be the back up site admin.

6. We will encourage, guide and nurture any new member who is interested to take the first step into mapping or map data collection. We are also open to any suggestion on improving our maps and forum.

7. We will not licence or sell our data outright. Commercial companies who want to use our data for their products or services are required to:
a) Include credits to malfreemaps.com in their product/service
b) Retain the data in its original form without any editing
c) Make a donation of at least RM3,000 to a legal charity organization in the name of malfreemaps.com and show us the receipt as proof - this condition is put on hold until the confirmation of our legal framework
d) MFM data is not to be re-sold or sub-licensed
e) Our map data can be obtained by opening our maps with Mapedit. Due to our workload, we do not provide our source data and support :)


8. We will not licence or sell our data outright. MFM will gladly produce free maps for leading GPS navigation softwares provide:
a) MFM mappers are provided with the tools and technical guidance to produce the map
b) MFM maps should not be locked or tied to other paid maps. MFM maps should be FREE (no payment required) and FREE (no condition attached)
c) MFM should be given total control over the release of our maps in any platform.
Last edited by antyong (retired) on Sat Oct 24, 2009 5:01 am, edited 4 times in total.
Reason: Added point 8, a core philosophy which was previously omitted

User avatar
antyong (retired)
Site Admin (retired)
Posts: 1518
Joined: Sun Sep 14, 2008 11:42 am
Location: Acquiring satellites....

Re: About Malfreemaps

Postby antyong (retired) » Mon Jun 22, 2009 10:53 am

MySgfreemaps internet domain and servers

Domains
  • Malfreemaps.com
  • Malfreemaps.net
  • Malfreemaps.org

MFM Server sites
  • ipserverone semi-dedicated server - for MFM forum - 300GB/month - RM140/month
  • exabytes ebiz gold shared hosting - MFM maps download - 300GB/month - RM400/year
  • free SG server - MFM maps download - unlimited bandwidth - free

Alternative map download sites
  • feiming's site (MY)
  • nicholas chan's site (SG)
  • calibur's site (SG)

Many thanks to other member who had offered to host our maps
  • fausham
  • tkew
  • chaicka
  • adrianyujs (via rapidshare)
  • joechong (via rapidshare)

By rough estimate, MFM is serving almost 1,000GB of map data to the public each month \:D/


Last bumped by antyong (retired) on Mon Jun 22, 2009 10:53 am.


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