The Future of Tile5

Almost two weeks ago now, I posted on my personal blog regarding my thoughts on finding Tile5’s niche in the “web mapping API ecosystem”. While I’ve been very happy with how the library has come together and what I have achieved over the last year, it has become clear to me that sustaining the pace of development (and attemping to keep this site and documentation up-to-date) over the last year is something that I cannot sustain. Nor is it something that is necessarily fair on my family, or my business (especially given that we are growing in non-mapping related areas). In addition to my own post, it was very interesting to read excellent posts from both Volker Mische and Christopher Schmidt summarizing the discussion of the perceived flaws of OpenLayers at Where Camp EU. Both are well worth a read, so I would encourage you to do so.

It’s become clear to me over the course of the year, that while it right to create Tile5 when I did, libraries like OpenLayers are starting to get to the point now where they do offer a viable mobile mapping library. Additionally, when you add LeafletJS and deCarta’s own Mobile Javascript libraries into the mix, you can start to see that most mapping libraries will be mobile compliant soon enough. This is great news, and takes care of one of the reasons that I started Tile5.

The other reason I started Tile5 is that I believe developers should be able to code mapping applications using a uniform API, and that API should be able to give them the ability to switch between mapping providers at their discretion. The mapping providers and engines should not be able to lock a customer in through the use of a proprietary API. This is something that I believe OpenLayers has the goal of addressing also.

While from outside it appears that OpenLayers has stagnated somewhat I believe this isn’t the case, and there are some very talented and passionate developers continuing to push OpenLayers forward. In particular I would like to tip my hat to Eric Lemoine, who since I started following him on Twitter has probably done the most through both word and action to change my opinion of OpenLayers.

So then, what is the future of Tile5? Am I going to stop working on it? Is it going to disappear?

No, definitely not.

Tile5 will continue to be developed and actively maintained. This site, however, and the code examples and rather slender API documentation will be made more maintanable (and less pretty). Additionally, Tile5 will not be a library that will be advertised as a library that fits every need or is for everybody.

It’s highly likely that I will continue to use it for building client applications where I want to provide a “shinier” solution, but additionally, OpenLayers will be likely be adopted into the Sidelab toolbox for mapping projects also.

The long and the short of it, is that I still very much enjoy working on Tile5 and wouldn’t be able to stop if I tried. Creating an OpenLayers competitor is never something that I intended (or have the capacity) to do. Therefore, the Tile5 site will direct people to solutions such as OpenLayers, Polymaps, Leaflet where appropriate. When someone is after a mapping library that can render using the HTML5 Canvas, DOM or WebGL using the same codebase (albeit using plugins), that’s when Tile5 will put it’s hand up and say “Yep, that’s me”.