When we get Komooted

Trust, Betrayal, and “Getting Komooted”

• Many commenters feel personally betrayed: they paid for maps, contributed routes, or joined as staff under a “we won’t sell” ethos, then watched 80% of employees fired and the product start to degrade.
• Others argue this outcome was predictable: for-profit, VC-backed platforms with closed data almost always end in acquisition and enshittification.
• Some place primary blame on the founders (no employee equity, broken “never sell” promise); others see Bending Spoons as just the latest interchangeable private-equity owner.

Employee Treatment and Labor Norms

• Strong sympathy for staff who accepted below-market salaries, relocated, or tied identity to the “mission,” then were cut with modest severance.
• Long side-thread on labor law: German probation rules vs at‑will U.S. employment, notice periods, and whether job security should be guaranteed.
• Philosophical split:
  • One camp says “a job is never guaranteed; workers should protect themselves, build savings, and treat work as transactional.”
  • Another argues that extreme insecurity is corrosive, especially for people with families and mortgages.

Alternatives, Open Data, and the Commons

• Heavy interest in alternatives: RideWithGPS, OpenStreetMap-based tools (OsmAnd, Organic Maps, brouter/bikerouter), Wikiloc, cycle.travel, AlpineQuest, Locus, Strava, local national-map apps, and new community projects like Wanderer and AlpiMaps.
• People like Komoot’s UX, offline routing, and community-shared routes/photos; most FOSS/federated options are seen as less polished, harder to use on mobile, and lacking seamless device sync.
• Strong sentiment that user-contributed data should be open, exportable, and under commons-style licenses to prevent future rug pulls—pointing to examples like Trailforks and couch-surfing platforms as cautionary tales.

Capitalism, Private Equity, and Governance Models

• Many see this as textbook “enclosure”: community-generated value captured in a proprietary platform, then monetized via layoffs, price hikes, and dark patterns.
• Debate over whether private equity ever creates social value versus acting as an “asset strip and squeeze” mechanism.
• Proposed remedies: co-ops, benefit corporations, non-profits, CICs, federated protocols, stronger data-ownership laws, and exportable/open GPX datasets. Skeptics counter that any concentration of power (including government and non-profits) risks similar abuse unless incentives are redesigned.