VersaTiles – a complete FLOSS map stack

I'd be interested to understand how this compares with a solution like openfreemap's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41635592) which was posted a few weeks ago.

What is it that sets this apart from other similar solutions?

There really seems to be a lot of movement in the map space these days!

Functionally they are rather similar in what they're aiming for. Architecturally there are some differences.

OpenFreeMap uses the MapTiles format [1] which is an open source format for vector tiles that does require the attribution of the OpenMapTiles page for every map generated from it (CC-BY license). Versatiles uses the Shortbread format instead [2] which is published under a CC0 license. Instead of the SQLite based mbtiles format they developed their own container format (and a converter).

I've only started tinkering with this project a little bit cause I found it interesting after watching a CCC talk with it [3]

[1] https://openmaptiles.org/

[2] https://shortbread-tiles.org/

[3] German: https://youtu.be/8A51WkJ5S8I