GrayJay is an app associated with Louis Rossmann and lot of people seems to like him and therefore has gotten lot of traction lately but there is something you should know. This app is not open source even though source may be available. The app is not licensed in any existing open source license such as GPL, BSD, or MIT, etc. The source license is basically does not allow freedom of redistribution of modified code so therefore it fails the minimal definition of open source. Louis Rossmann has gone on the record on video saying he will sue people if someone were to do something with code he does not approve of whatever that means. Number of people have tried to tell him not to call GrayJay an open source app but he simply ignored them. It’s pretty clear he is now just calling this app open source for marketing purposes which I think is misleading and deceptive.

If you want to buy the app because you find it useful and you don’t care about open source, that’s perfectly fine. However if you believe that supporting an open source ecosystem is part of the reason for supporting GrayJay, then you should know what’s really happening here.

EDIT: I did some digging and it appears Louis Rossmann has stopped referring GrayJay as open source app. I tried searching for his original GrayJay announcement video and it appears it’s gone. I guess enough people have pestered him about his misconception of open source so he removed all mention of open source. GrayJay does have a source code available and it comes with LICENSE. Good on him to clarify the situation. Just for clarification, it is clearly not open source because of non-commercial limitation. This license is not compatible with open source so using any portion in your open source project is not allowed. The limitation is so broad that it’s probably best to just stay far away from it to be safe.

Some Alternatives:

Open Street Map

MapQuest

Organic Maps (Mobile)

EDIT: Added Organic Maps

EDIT: Removed Apple Maps since they’ve made their change.