thinking outside the bounding box

The Mapzen projects at Linux Foundation form an open and accessible mapping platform. We're focused on the core components of geo platforms, including search, rendering, navigation, and data. We continue to take a radical approach to working on these components—we build them all entirely in the open.

We built these things and provided them as a commercial service until 2018, but these are tools that developers at any level can easily set up and use themselves, for free. We don’t want to lock users into proprietary platforms, relying on black boxes they can’t take apart. That’s why we work on individual components, modular building blocks that anyone can use for better maps. We build things so you can build things.

Founded by map industry veterans in combination with architects, urban planners, movie makers, video game developers, artists and more, Mapzen empowers organizations of all sizes to reimagine what’s possible with cartography today. Originally based out of the Samsung Accelerator and now with the Linux Foundation, we support the geo community through building tools and collaborating on open source mapping projects. We believe that a healthy mapping ecosystem is one that is diverse, sustainable, and accessible to all.

Our open source mapping software projects are MIT, BSD, or Apache licensed, and our data projects are CC-BY or public domain. A list of open licenses for our software and data projects, and their dependencies is available.

Maps are and for centuries have been incredibly powerful tools for shaping how we see the world and how we live in it. Open-source map technologies follow a long tradition of community-powered cartography. Strengthening that community is core to our success, and all of our work begins at that level. Mapzen starts where you are.