Goodbye maptime.io, hello maptime.fun!
by: Alan McConchie, keeping the lights on
Hey everybody! It’s been a while.
If you haven’t heard, Maptime HQ (as a central coordinating committee) is on indefinite hiatus. But the idea of Maptime lives on, in a small and now fully decentralized network of local chapters that continue meeting in various corners of the world, and in the hearts of map lovers around the globe wherever the passion for learning, sharing, and rainbows can be found.
That said, there are still a few of us occasionally checking in on the website, making sure things are still (mostly) running, and that the domain registration bills keep getting paid.
On that front, we’ve got two things to share:
First, we decided to let the maptime.io domain registration lapse, and we’ve switched over to maptime.fun as our new primary domain (with maptime.org as a backup).
Why make that switch? Well, at some point (it’s not clear when) the top-level .io domain will be going away. While the .IO suffix might seem like a straightforward techie reference to Input/Output (and certainly during heady days of the mid-2010s it was a vibe) it’s actually the top-level domain of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a bizarre colonial relic that thankfully and at long last has been ceded from the United Kingdom to rejoin the independent country of Mauritius.
You can read more about the impending demise of .io at “The Disappearance of an Internet Domain” by Gareth Edwards.
As part of this process of digital decolonization, we’re happy to bid farewell our .io domain. So, for now, .fun it is!
Second, yes we did mention we are still paying some domain registration bills! Our costs are very low, but if you feel like chipping in, anything would be appreciated! We take donations at https://ko-fi.com/maptime
What’s next:
Thank you all for your support and involvement in Maptime over the years, and into the future. What’s next for Maptime? Well, whatever you make of it!
There’s nothing stopping anyone from starting new Maptime chapters anywhere in the world. If you need help figuring out how to do it, just ask on social media (we are now on Mastodon and Bluesky) or drop by the #maptime channel in the OpenStreetMap Slack group.
As always, happy mapping! ❤️🌈
